Rupee touchs new all-time intra-day low at Rs 60.34 a dollar.

Month-end dollar demand from importers resulted in the rupee touching a new all-time low on Wednesday against the dollar.

The rupee touched a low of Rs 60.34 breaching previous all-time intra-day low of Rs 59.98 hit last week.

At 3:15 pm, the rupee was trading at Rs 60.25 compared with previous close of Rs 59.65 per dollar. It had opened at Rs 59.73 per dollar. According to dealers the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) did intervene, but due to heavy dollar demand despite the intervention, the rupee weakened.
 Nifty closed at 5581.40 down by 27.70%, Sensex broke 109.33% down at 18519.82

Bajaj Auto falls as workers at Chakan plant go on strike.

The workers at the plant have been demanding an option to subscribe to 500 equity shares of the company at a discounted price of Re 1 share.

Bajaj Auto  is trading lower by 1.5% at Rs 1,774 after the company said production at the company’s Chakan plant has been affected due to a labor strike.

The stock opened at Rs 1,783 and hit a low of Rs 1,760 on NSE. A combined 75,738 shares have changed hands on the counter till 1000 hours on NSE and BSE.

“The workers at the Chakan plant have stopped coming to work from June 25, 2013 following management’s refusal to concede to their demand,” Bajaj Auto said in a regulatory filing.

The workers at the plant have been demanding an option to subscribe to 500 equity shares of the company at a discounted price of Re 1 share, it added.

The workers union at the Chakan plant, Vishwa Kalyan Kamgar Sanghatana had earlier proposed for a stoppage of work from the morning shift of June 28, 2013.

The Chakan plant has an installed capacity of 1.2mn units (around 22% of the total installed capacity) and it manufactures products like Pulsar, Avenger, Ninja and KTM.

Gold drops to 3-year low on strong US data

Gold hit a near-three year low on Wednesday, falling for a seventh session out of eight, as strong US economic data boosted stocks and supported the Federal Reserve's plan to scale back its bond purchases in the next few months.

Bullion prices have been sliding since Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke laid out a strategy last Wednesday to wind down the bank's USD 85 billion monthly bond purchases on the back of a recovering economy.

Spot gold fell 1.4 percent to USD 1,258.54 an ounce by 0202 GMT. Gold for immediate delivery fell to USD 1,254.74 earlier - its lowest since September 2010, while Comex gold also fell to a near 3-year low of USD 1,254.6.

Gold's losses since the beginning of last week through Tuesday amount to 8 percent, or about USD 113 per ounce.

"We've pushed past the USD 1,270 level seen last week. That's a key technical level so we are going through a whole bunch of stop losses," said Victor Thianpiriya, commodities analyst at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group.

Silver fell over 2 percent to its lowest since August 2010.

The Fed said it would wind down bullion-friendly bond purchases from later this year, and end purchases by mid-2014 depending on the economic recovery.

Data on Tuesday showed US consumer confidence jumped in June to its highest level in more than five years, while sales of new U.S. single-family homes rose to their highest level in nearly five years in May.

Govt approves Rs 650 cr penalty on Bharti Airtel

Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal is learnt to have approved levying of Rs 650 crore penalty on Bharti Airtel for violating roaming norms in 13 service areas between 2003 and 2005.

"The Minister has approved penalty of Rs 650 crore on SLD (subscriber local dialing) matter," a Telecom Ministry official told PTI.

An internal committee of Department of Telecom had alleged that Bharti Airtel had continued to route national and international calls as local calls (SLD) under a scheme till 2005 despite being told to stop it in 2003.

This caused loss to the government exchequer and state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), it said. The official said "demand notice will be issued this
week".

SBI to turn aggressive against defaulting firms.

The mounting burden of bad loans has forced State Bank of India (SBI) to change the way it deals with defaulting companies. To ensure promoters of these companies make timely payments, SBI has decided to turn aggressive in filing winding-up petitions against them.

SBI Chairman Pratip Chaudhuri said the bank would be more active in filing such suits, one of the ways to ensure improvement in repayment behaviour.

A senior SBI official said compared to other banks, SBI was slow in filing and following up on winding-up cases. He added feedback suggested legal pressure worded in case promoters had resources, but were avoiding timely payments.

In 2001-12 and 2012-13, the level of SBI’s impaired assets showed an upward bias, a reflection of the state of the economy. The bank also recorded unprecedented delinquencies. The deterioration was the most severe in sectors such as paper & plastics, iron & steel, textiles, engineering goods and transport.

As of March-end, the bank’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) stood at 4.75 per cent, while net NPAs stood at 2.1 per cent.

  The bank also has a large portfolio of restructured loans, for which risks of slippages are much higher than that in the case of standard loans.

In March, total restructured assets stood at Rs 43,111 crore. Of this, Rs 32,228 crore was in the standard category, while Rs 10,883 crore was in the NPA segment.

As of March-end, provisioning for NPAs stood at Rs 11,368 crore. The bank’s provision coverage ratio, or the sum set aside to cover bad loans, stood at 66.58 per cent.

SBI’s gross NPAs declined from Rs 53,458 crore (5.3 per cent) in the quarter ended December to Rs 51,189 crore (4.75 per cent) in the quarter ended March. In 2012-13, Rs 10,119 crore was upgraded from NPAs to standard assets, while cash recovery in NPA accounts stood at Rs 4,766 crore. Recovery for written-off accounts stood at Rs 1,066 crore.