Ø Trump’s conference did not contain any references to the tax cuts or to the infrastructure spending of $1 trillion

Ø In a negative move for IT and Pharma, Trump spoke about border tax on outsourcing and penalties for drug makers

Ø This gives Aurobindo seamless access to the entire Europe market which already accounts for 23% of revenues

Ø The deal helps Aurobindo largely de-risk its exposure to the US, where FDA problems are likely to increase

Ø According to Erian, a strong dollar could make US companies uncompetitive in global markets depressing equity values

Ø A strong dollar will also force the Chinese Yuan to weaken setting off a price war among emerging markets.

Ø Currently LTCG for equities is fixed at 1 year, which is the cut-off for deciding whether gains are long term or short term

Ø To put equities at par with other assets, this budget may change definition of LTCG on equities to 3 years

Ø Advance estimates for the fiscal year 2016-17 has been cut from 7.6% to 7.1% by the CSO

Ø Citigroup has downgraded India’s full-year GDP from 7.2% to 6.8% to factor the impact of demonetization

Ø Direct tax collections for Jan-Dec period up by 12% and indirect tax collections up by 25% in the same period

Ø High levels of buoyancy was visible in collections of service tax, excise duty and personal income taxes

Ø INX is an international exchange situated at the GIFT city in Gandhinagar in Gujarat

Ø The idea is to avoid losing to global exchanges like Nifty trading to SGX and currency trading to DGCX

Ø Net profits were up by 29% in Q3 while the net interest income (NII) expanded by 34%

Ø Gross NPAs and Net NPAs of the bank were marginally up at 0.94% and 0.39% respectively, but well in control

Ø China has decided to cut its steel capacity by nearly 10%, especially in the lower and mid-grade steel segment

Ø This will reduce the dumping of steel from China into India and also keep steel prices higher globally.

Ø Proptiger, Housing.com and Makaan have decided to merge to form a single unified entity,

Ø It will be an all-stock deal where the 3 brands will hold on to their distinct brands and have clear niches

Ø According to Knight Frank, year 2016 will see the lowest levels of sales and new launches since 2010

Ø This is a direct outcome of the liquidity crunch caused by the demonetization drive and may persist for 2 more quarters

Ø Auto numbers fell by 18.66% for Dec 2016, a level last seen in late 2000 at the peak of the dotcom crisis.

Ø While the LCV segment saw a marginal 1.5% growth, two-wheelers were the worst hit in the auto space

Ø Currently different currency borrowings have different rates of withholding taxes. These will be made uniformly lower

Ø The withholding tax on rupee denominated bonds (Masala bonds) may be entirely scrapped

Ø Against Rs.16,00,000 crore of currency demonetized, the RBI has only issued fresh currency of Rs.8,00,000 crore

Ø The government may retain the final cash levels at much lower levels to reduce black money and encourage digitization

Ø Key contenders for the top job include Ashish Chauhan of BSE and former BSE CEO, Madhu Kannan

Ø Former CEO, Chitra Ramakrishnan, had put in her papers ahead of the NSE indictment on preferential access to brokers

Ø Dr. Patel’s warning came at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit to caution the government from expanding fiscal deficit

Ø He has also cautioned the government on off-balance-sheet items like guarantees and interest subvention schemes

Ø TCS revenues were up by 1.5% and profits up by 2.9% for Q3. Digital business grew by 30% and was for 16.8% of revenues

Ø Rajesh Gopinathan takes over as CEO of TCS as Chandra moves on as Chairman of the powerful Tata Sons

Ø Fall in retail inflation was largely driven by lower food inflation which fell sharply to the 1.98% mark

Ø Despite negative inflation in pulses and vegetables, RBI may be cautious on rate cuts in the Feb policy

Ø In terms of user industries classification, IIP growth has been led by the capital goods sector

Ø This is paradoxical since the demonetization was supposed to lead to a slowdown in IIP growth, which is not the case

Ø Crude oil prices are up by 9% and GRMs are up by 31% in the third quarter on a comparative basis

Ø This will result in higher realizations for upstream and for downstream companies in India

Ø India has already renegotiated tax treaties with Mauritius and Singapore to tax capital gains in India

Ø Since Netherlands still runs on the old treaty, FPIs may prefer Netherlands to route money into India, at least for now