Chanda Kochhar, the chief executive officer of India's second-biggest lender, has left the building, and her new deputy should waste no time in letting stakeholders know who the real boss is: It's him.
Fortis Healthcare Ltd. has to admit a new owner to keep the lights on. Before it does, though, India's second-largest hospital chain must write four of its board members a discharge slip.
Other than the embarrassment of asking the country's second-largest state-run lender to, well, stop lending, there's no other reason why India should allow Punjab National Bank to advance even one rupee to anybody except the government.
It's disingenuous to think that India's biggest banking fraud was just one bent officer in a bumbling state-run lender enriching an uncle-nephew pair of greedy diamond merchants. That's the spin Punjab National Bank is trying to put on the $1.8 billion scam that went on for seven years.
Now that bitcoin is a mainstream asset, with futures contracts traded at the world's largest exchange, becoming actual money should be the logical next step. But if you were to ask investors their expectations, the reply in most cases would likely be: "Not in my lifetime."
Assiduously shielding its loan book from the flying debris of India's $207 billion bad-debt crisis, HDFC Bank Ltd. has kept its balance sheet in a near-pristine condition.
Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man, sold 10-year dollar notes at just 130 basis points over U.S. Treasuries on Monday. None of the existing debt of Indian nonfinancial issuers, including state-owned firms, was raised this cheaply, according to Bloomberg News reporters Carrie Hong and Neha D'silva.
In the annals of economic experimentation, India's cash ban will stand out. Not because it was ill-advised, poorly executed or unsuccessful in achieving its original aims. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's move to outlaw 86 percent of his country's currency a year ago today was all those things. What made it remarkable, though, was the way it flew aga...
