Today’s Latest Business News, Finance and Share Market News at 5:30 pm on 12 April 2023

Let's begin. Nestle India Ltd on Wednesday declared an interim dividend of Rs 27 per equity share of Rs 10 each for the calendar year 2023. Nestle has announced April 21 as the record date for determining the eligibility of shareholders for interim dividend payment. “This is to inform you that the Board of Directors at their meeting held today declared an interim dividend of Rs 27 per equity share of Rs 10 each for the year 2023 on the entire issued, subscribed and paid-up share capital of the Company of 9,64,15,716 equity shares of the nominal value of Rs 10 each,” Nestle India said in a stock exchange filing. This is Nestle’s first interim dividend for the year 2023, and will be paid on and from 8 May, along with the final dividend for the year 2022. Earlier, for the year 2022, Nestle issued a total dividend of Rs 220 per share.

Meanwhile, Consumption demand in India is cooling and the economy has nearly caught up with the pandemic-induced slowdown, leaving lesser grounds to cover for an expansion, said Nada Choueiri, International Monetary Fund’s Mission Chief for the country in an interview with Bloomberg Television. The IMF slashed its growth outlook for India to 5.9% for the current fiscal year that started this month from 6.1% it had forecast in January, while that for next fiscal year has now been cut by half-a-percentage point to 6.3%. The fund trimmed its global growth projection to 2.8% this year from 2.9% seen earlier. Data suggests demand is softening, “but more importantly, new data available on the previous years suggests that the pandemic impact on the economy has been short-lived and growth has recovered much more quickly,” diminishing the “need for catchup,” Choueiri said in her interview to Rishaad Salamat and Haslinda Amin.

Moving on. Telecom major Reliance Jio’s fully-owned subsidiary Reliance Projects will buy Rs 123.84 crore worth of optical fibre cables from HFCL Limited. In a regulatory filing, HFCL said, quote, “The Company along with its material subsidiary, HTL Limited, has received the Purchase Orders aggregating to ~Rs 123.84 crores from Reliance Projects & Property Management Services Limited for supply of Optical Fiber Cables to one of the leading Private Telecom Operators of the country,” unquote. The time period by which the order is to be executed is October 2023, according to the filing. Earlier last year, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani had said that Jio’s pan-India fibre-optic network is more than 11 lakh kilometres in length which is long enough to go around Earth over 27 times.

On to the twitter saga. Twitter CEO Elon Musk has seemingly taken yet another step towards his big plans for social media giant Twitter. Reportedly, Musk’s X Corp has merged Twitter into itself, making it the latest addition to the list of companies like The Boring Company, Tesla and SpaceX Neuralink. This acquisition could be seen as Musk’s first major initiative to transform Twitter into an “everything app” – something that he has mentioned in his past tweets. While it wasn’t explicitly spoken out by the company, the information of Twitter being swallowed by X Corp was spotted in the lawsuit filed by conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer against Twitter. In a court filing on April 4, it was seen that Twitter, had been merged into X Corp. and was no longer an independent entity. Loomer broke the news of this development on her Twitter account on Monday.

In other news, Ernst & Young on Tuesday scrapped its planned breakup, exposing the shortcomings of the partnership model in professional services. The Big Four accounting firm intended to spin off its consulting business and much of its tax practice into a stand-alone public company. But the plan, known as Project Everest, fell into jeopardy this year after its influential US affiliate balked, while partners squabbled over key issues like how to divide the tax practice. Leadership of the $45 billion firm, known as EY, told partners Tuesday that an eventual split was possible, but that more time and investment was necessary to make it happen.

Lastly, the share market. Domestic indices ended broadly in green on Wednesday. The NSE Nifty 50 rose 90.10 points or 0.51% to 17,812.40, BSE Sensex surged 235.05 points or 0.39% to 60,392.77 and Bank Nifty climbed 191.45 points or 0.46% to 41,557.95. The top gainers on Nifty 50 were Divis Lab, Bajaj Auto, Adani Enterprises, Eicher Motors and Dr Reddy while the top losers were Power Grid, NTPC, Nestle India, UltraTech Cement and Hindustan Unilever Ltd. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd shares rose 1.5% on Wednesday ahead of the Q4 results announcement. TCS stock touched an intraday high of Rs 3,260.95 and closed at Rs 3,245.50.
 

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