Top Business News of 2014: India

The year 2014 has been buzzing with news and what does it mean for an MBA aspirant preparing to take the entrance exam this year? It’s just more and so much more to catch up with.

No matter how confident you are of your quantitative aptitude and verbal ability sections, you can’t escape the fact that it’s your grip on current affairs and GK that plays the big differentiator at the time of the final selection. A serious aspirant is expected to know current happenings in India and the world, if they want to perform well in their GD/WAT/PI round.

So, in this article, we will be listing the top events that captured headlines in the business sections of national dailies, radio shows and TV news bulletins.

Sensex soars

The BSE Sensex reached an all time high by crossing the 28,000 mark for the first time on November 5, 2014. The sensex surged 1,917 points and hit a (lifetime) high of 28,010.39 in early trade.

An Economic Times news report shared that, “The last 1,000 points of the Sensex rally came in just five trading sessions. The Nifty extended its winning streak for the sixth consecutive session. While foreign portfolio investors bought Indian equities worth 1,031 crore on Wednesday, domestic institutions sold 1,204 crore of shares, as per BSE provisional figures”

Big online sales

Close to the festive season e-retailers such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon introduced huge discounts on products they had on offer.

Flipkart in its ‘Big Billion Day’ sales claimed to have earned over Rs 600 crore within 10 hours. However, the website also received flak from customers who called it a bogus sale stating that the best-selling schemes which were displayed on the website were being reflected as ‘out-of-stock’ within a minute of the sale beginning. Flipkart also issued a written apology to customers for failing to deliver on their promise. 

Snapdeal claimed to peg its sales at Rs 1 crore a minute which also accounted to a sale figure of around Rs 600 crore.

Amazon ran a three day discount campaign called 'Mission to Mars' but the firm did not disclose any sales figures.

Business bigwigs visiting India

• Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Office (CEO) of Microsoft visited India on September 28, 2014 to address employees at Microsoft’s India Development Centre in Hyderabad.  
• Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg visited India in October 2014 wherein he launched the global Internet project called internet.org. He also proposed the usage of drones and satellite communications to take internet to remote locations in India. Apart from this, he also joined hands with India on the Swach Bharat or Clean India Campaign and also worked towards strengthening the business confidence in India for Facebook.
• Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon visited India in October 2014. As part of his visit, Amazon introduced its drone delivery service in India with trials in Mumbai and Bangalore. Apart from this Amazon also announced $ 2 billion investment in India.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Mergermarket, global deal tracking firm in one of its report stated that, “The value of India targeted M&A activity was valued at $17.1 billion in H1 2014, a 47.4 per cent increase from H1 2013 when it stood at $11.6 billion”. Further it was informed that, “The April-June quarter of this year saw deals worth $ 13.4 billion, accounting for 78 per cent of the total first half deal value. In the January-March quarter there were M&A transactions worth $3.7 billion only”.

• Bharti Airtel signed a Long Term Evolution (LTE)/4G network deal with Ericsson in October 2014 with Ericsson, a Swedish telecom gear firm.
• The Government of India in October 2014 ordered the merger of National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL), the scam-hit firm, with Financial Technologies India Ltd (FTIL).
• Kotak Mahindra Bank acquired 15% stake of Financial Technologies (India) Ltd (FTIL) on September 29, 2014 in Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) for Rs 459 crore. The Bank acquired MCX shares at about Rs 664 a piece.
• Reliance Industries Limited bought about 78% stakes in Network18 Media and showed investments for Rs 4000 crore.
• Flipkart, an Indian e-retailer acquired Myntra.com and analysts speculate the buy-out to be over $300 million.
• Snapdeal, an Indian retail website raises $100 million from five investors. These investors are Azim Premji’s home office, Temasek, BlackRock, hedge fund Tybourne and Myriad which is an asset management company based out of Hong Kong.
• Asian Paints Ltd acquires the entire front-end sales business of Ess Ess Bathroom Products Pvt Ltd for an undisclosed sum.

People movement in Leadership roles

• Kaustubh Kulkarni becomes the head of India investment banking at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
• Nita Ambani becomes the first woman to be appointed on the board of Directors of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL).
• Arundhati Bhattacharya is the first woman to be appointed as the Chairperson of State Bank of India (SBI).