Banking and Financial Awareness January 2020: Week III

Adani Capital acquires Essel Finance’s MSME lending business

Adani Capital Pvt. Ltd, which is the non-banking financial company (NBFC) arm of Adani Group, has acquired Essel Finance’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) loan business.
Adani Capital Pvt. Ltd is focussed on small and micro-entrepreneurs.
After this acquisition, Adani Capital has secured a loan book of around Rs. 145 crores.

The telecom department has approved up to 100 per cent FDI in Bharti Airtel.
Before this, the FDI was 49% in the company.
At present, foreign ownership in Bharti Airtel is 44.28 per cent, after the share placement.

According to "Outlook 2020: Global economic trends and their impact on gold" report by World Gold Council (WGC), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has become the 6th largest buyer of sovereign gold abroad after it purchased 25.2 tonnes in the first 10 months of the year 2019.
Other five banks that purchased more gold than RBI are central banks of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Poland.
In October 2019, RBI bought 7.5 tonnes of gold buttressing its foreign exchange reserves to $450 billion.
World Gold Council (WGC) is headquartered in London, UK.

The 50th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum began in Davos, Switzerland.
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal will lead the Indian delegation to the meeting.
Over 100 CEOs, political leaders including Union Ministers and Chief Ministers will take part in this annual event.
Klaus Schwab is the founder and executive chairman of WEF.

United Nations has released the World Economic Situation Prospects (WESP) report 2020.
According to the report, a global growth rate of 2.5 per cent is expected in the year 2020.
United Nations has lowered India's GDP growth forecast to 5.7 per cent in the current fiscal from 7.6 per cent projected in 2019.
Along with this, UN has also lowered India's GDP forecast for the next fiscal to 6.6 per cent from 7.4 per cent estimated earlier.

The South Central Zone of the Indian Railways has signed an MoU with the State Bank of India to provide doorstep banking facility to the stations of the zone.
Under the agreement, doorstep banking facility will be provided at 585 railway stations of the south central zone.
This facility will allow direct pickup of earnings from the railway stations and will save the complex activity of cash movement through cash safes by trains.

Government of India and the World Bank has signed an agreement for $88 million loan of Assam Inland Water Transport Project.
The agreement aims to modernize the passenger ferry sector of Assam by improving the infrastructure and its services.
Under the agreement, technically better-designed terminals and energy-efficient vessels will be provided to make the ferry services more efficient, modern and safe.

RBI asks banks to allow at the time of issue or re-issue, all cards (physical and virtual) should be enabled for use only at contact-based points of usage [ATMs and Point of Sale (PoS) devices] within India.
The instructions given by the RBI assume significance amid rising instances of cyber frauds.
Customers will have to separately set up services on their card for international transactions, online transactions, card-not-present transactions and contactless transactions.

The amendment provides that a Liquidator shall deposit the number of unclaimed dividends if any, and undistributed proceeds, if any, in a liquidation process along with any income earned thereon into the Corporate Voluntary Liquidation Account before submission of an application for dissolution of the corporate person.
It also provides a process for a stakeholder to seek withdrawal from the Corporate Voluntary Liquidation Account.
The amended regulations are effective from 16th January 2020.