Bank stake sale

Hyderabad, Aug. 4: Reducing its stake in public sector banks to below 50 per cent is an option before the government to enable banks to meet capital requirement norms under Basel III, Reserve Bank governor D. Subbarao said here today. He said Indian banks needed to raise Rs 1.5 lakh crore to Rs 1.75 lakh crore as capital to meet the Basel-III norms, which are to be implemented by March 31, 2018.

IPO reform

Jaipur, Aug. 4: The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) will soon initiate reforms in the initial public offer (IPO) market, Sebi member Rajeev Agrawal said. “Our objective is to ensure good quality of IPOs as well as rational pricing of the IPOs. For this purpose, we are going to introduce several actions in coming days,” he said.

Forex kitty

Mumbai, Aug. 4: Foreign exchange reserves swelled $1.31 billion to touch $288.65 billion on a jump in core currency assets, the RBI said. Reserves had swelled $589 million to $287.34 billion in the previous week.