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As stocks tumbled in India, the parent company of Paytm, a leading digital payments app, went public on Monday in hopes of becoming the country’s largest IPO.
The company One97 Communications aims to raise approximately $2.5 billion in a three-day bid that expires Wednesday. It has already attracted major institutional investors such as Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, Texas teachers’ pension fund, and the University of Cambridge, which has invested more than $1 billion.
Founded in 2010, Paytm started as a payment transfer business. It now allows users to send money to friends, buy small items like coffee or clothes, and finance big-ticket items like cars.
Apart from being ubiquitous in India’s largest cities, Paytm now manages over 40 percent of India’s digital payments market. The company has yet to make a profit, but is benefiting from growing interest from foreign and Indian investors seeking a share in India’s booming internet economy. An IPO could be worth $20 billion to the company.
“Paytm is turning into a marketplace in itself,” said Amit Khurana, analyst at Dolat Capital in Mumbai.
“There is a huge appetite for spending money on this type of model as it is seen as the business of the future.”
Overall, investors are increasingly bullish on the Indian economy’s recovery from the devastating effects of the pandemic and a series of lockdowns that have sharply cut industrial activity and consumer spending.
India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, has steadily lowered interest rates, encouraging banks to lend more and consumers – especially young, savvy online shoppers – to spend more.
“We are now in a sweet spot where the recovery in the bank coincides with the demographic transition and that coincides with the digital revolution,” said Madhavan Narayanan, an economist in India. “These three align the sun, moon and stars for young India.”
With the decline of coronavirus infections in India and the return of foot traffic to physical stores, newly sensitized customers may choose to scan QR codes instead of dealing with cash.
The pandemic has helped a trend towards a cashless economy in India that started with the sudden government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. withdrawal The policy aimed at curbing money laundering included banning most circulated notes, wiping out families’ savings, and closing businesses overnight. But five years later, it also seems to have created some winners, among them digital payment companies like Paytm.
Competition is heating up. Google offers Google Pay. Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, launched a joint venture with Facebook last year. Digital payments via WhatsApp, India’s most popular messaging service.
Paytm’s share offering is the latest in a string of over-demand IPOs in recent months among a string of unicorns backed by e-commerce giants like China’s Alibaba and its financial subsidiary Ant.
Institutional and foreign investors flocked to the July IPO of India’s food delivery app Zomato, which was 38 times more in demand than existing shares.
In a report in August, the Reserve Bank of India predicted that 2021 “could be the year of India’s IPO”.
Paytm’s bid to become India’s largest IPO has eclipsed another large offering. The parent company of online beauty products retailer Nykaa went public on Monday and is seeking a valuation of $7.4 billion.
Sameer Yasir contributing reporting.
Shares of several drug makers in Asia fell sharply on Monday in response to Pfizer’s announcement that its antiviral drug was highly effective in treating Covid-19.
CanSino Biology, A Chinese Covid-19 vaccine manufacturer, fell 17 percent during trading in Hong Kong. Shanghai Fosun, which holds the marketing rights in greater China for the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, saw shares in Hong Kong drop 7 percent before rebounding, down 2 percent.
China WuXi Biologics, Developing Covid vaccines and antibodies, fell 9 percent in Hong Kong. And shares of Japanese pharmaceutical company Shionogi & Co. Also developing a Covid treatment drug, fell 6 percent in Tokyo.
Pfizer On Friday, he said his new pill was given within three days. The onset of Covid symptoms, hospitalizations and deaths decreased by 89 percent. The company said it plans to submit the drug to Food and Drug Administration approval as soon as possible. A panel of experts had recommended that no more candidates be enrolled in the trial, as it had already demonstrated such effectiveness. the company said.
Last winter was warmer than average, resulting in relatively low residential electricity bills. Even if the coming winter isn’t harsh, heating costs could rise to levels not seen in a decade.
Several factors, including low global fuel stocks, incentives for manufacturers to allow prices to rise, and the mismatch between supply and demand as economies emerge from the pandemic, could drive the bills higher, Talmon Joseph Smith of The New York Times said. reports.
While the global economy slows during the pandemic, energy prices are climbing after falling. Natural gas, which is used to heat nearly half of the homes in the United States, price has roughly doubled since this time last year. Crude oil price, which strongly affects 10 percent of households using heating oil and propane during the winter months, similarly dazzling levels.
And those costs are quickly being passed on to consumers, who have become accustomed to cheaper energy prices in recent years, and their concerns about inflation have increased this year.
Biden administration last week For companies with 100 or more employees, set January 4 as the deadline Mandatory Covid vaccines or enact weekly testing of workers. The mandate, who had been in office for a while, quickly faced legal challenges, and a federal appeals panel on Saturday temporarily blocked the measure.
In a two-page order, the court asked the Biden administration to respond to a permanent injunction request by 5 p.m. Monday.
The management isready to defendGeneral surgeon Dr. “The rules,” Vivek Murthy said on Sunday. Dr. “The president and management wouldn’t have met these requirements if they didn’t think they were appropriate and necessary,” Murthy said on ABC’s This Week.
Dr. Murthy cited the nation’s history as a precedent: George Washington is necessary soldiers will be vaccinated against smallpox in 1777. The mandate will allow for medical or religious exemptions, and companies that do not comply can be fined.
A coalition of business, religious groups, advocacy organizations and several states, petition With the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Louisiana on Friday, arguing that the administration had overstepped its authority.
Jury on Saturday temporarily blocked new authority, writing “The petitions give reason to believe there are serious legal and constitutional issues with the mandate.”
The stay doesn’t have an immediate effect, as the first major deadline in the rule is December 5, where companies with at least 100 employees are mandating unvaccinated employees to wear masks indoors.
In Indianapolis, eviction courts are jam-packed as judges run through months of backlog. In Detroit, lawyers rush to knock on the doors of tenants facing possible eviction. In Gainesville, Fla., landlords are filing for eviction quickly as displaced tenants resort to their relatives’ sofas to sleep or seek cheaper rent outside the city.
not him sudden evacuation wave Tenants and lawyers feared after the Supreme Court ruled in August that President Biden’s extension of the eviction moratorium was unconstitutional.
Instead, a more gradual eviction crisis is unfolding, affecting more and more communities across the country, particularly where distribution of federal rent assistance is slow and tenants have little protection.
In the first two weeks of October, the number of eviction applications remained almost half of the pre-pandemic average. Evacuation Laboratory At Princeton University, applications are also increasing in the 31 cities and six states it follows.
In the first two weeks of September, immediately after the moratorium expired, applications for eviction rose 10 percent compared to the first two weeks of August. Evacuations in the first two weeks of October increased by about 14 percent compared to the first two weeks of the previous month.
“In places without protection, these numbers are increasing quite rapidly,” said Evacuation Lab researcher Peter Hepburn. “And we don’t know where the ceiling is.”
Gene Sperling, the economist who oversees the Biden administration’s pandemic relief programs, credited the $46.5 billion in federal rent assistance set aside by Congress last winter to alleviate the problem. more than that two million payments done – about a million in August and September alone.
Some jurisdictions have used some of the money to offer programs that provide alternatives to eviction or legal aid for tenants. According to the Urban Institute, just over 37 percent of all tenants in the country still live in places that have local eviction bans or delay eviction orders pending rent assistance.
Elsewhere, however, limited tenant protections and limits on the distribution of rent aid are spurring an increase in evictions.
“Nobody should sleep well at night while there is still so much painful, preventable evacuation,” Mr. Sperling said.
Housing advocates and experts say the true scale of the crisis facing tenants is not understood by the current figures on evictions. “The avalanche of evictions is definitely here across the country,” said Katie Goldstein, director of housing justice campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy.
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