Mizuho said to hire Mashreqbank's corporate banking head in India
Sharma will join the unit of Mizuho Financial Group in the coming weeks after completing his gardening leave at the Dubai-based lender, where he was head of India corporate banking, said the people who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Mizuho declined to comment, while Mashreqbank confirmed his resignation. Sharma, who worked at Mashreqbank for eight years, didn't respond to a text message seeking comment.
Sharma will be a Mumbai-based managing director at the Japanese lender and look after the bank's business in western India, the people said. He has about two decades of banking experience including at ICICI Bank, HSBC Holdings and National Australia Bank, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Mizuho and its Japanese peers Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group are betting big in India, with a focus on corporate and investment banking, and retail loans. Japanese lenders rank among the top 10 arrangers of offshore loans for Indian companies in the past few years, data compiled by Bloomberg shows.
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Japan Times
2 hours ago
- Japan Times
India-U.S. spat over trade and oil threatens wider fallout
U.S. President Donald Trump's tirade against India over trade and Russian oil purchases threatens to undo two decades of diplomatic progress, analysts and officials say, and could derail other areas of cooperation as domestic political pressures drive both sides to harden their stances. India's opposition parties and the general public have urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to stand up to what they call bullying by Trump, who on Wednesday signed an executive order subjecting Indian imports to an additional 25% in duties on top of an existing 25% tariff, due to its big purchases of Russian oil. While India has emerged in recent years as a key partner for Washington in its strategic rivalry with China, its large U.S. trade surplus and close relations with Russia — which Trump is seeking to pressure into agreeing to a peace agreement with Ukraine — have made it a prime target in the Republican president's global tariff offensive. Trump's taunt that India could buy oil from arch enemy Pakistan has also not gone down well in New Delhi, said two Indian government sources. India has also rejected repeated claims by Trump that he used trade as a lever to end a recent military conflict between India and Pakistan. In an unusually sharp statement this week, India accused the U.S. of double standards in singling it out for Russian oil imports while continuing to buy Russian uranium hexafluoride, palladium and fertilizer. On Wednesday, it called the tariffs "unfair, unjustified and unreasonable," vowing to "take all actions necessary to protect its national interests." But New Delhi knows that any further escalation will hurt it in matters beyond trade, said the sources. Unlike China, India does not have leverage like supplies of rare earths to force Trump's hand to improve the terms of any trade deal, they said. In recent years, successive U.S. administrations, including Trump's first, carefully cultivated relations with India with an eye on it as a vital partner in long-term efforts to counter the growing might of China. U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House in February. | REUTERS But analysts say Trump's recent moves have plunged the relationship back to possibly its worst phase since the U.S. imposed sanctions on India for nuclear tests in 1998. "India is now in a trap: because of Trump's pressure, Modi will reduce India's oil purchases from Russia, but he cannot publicly admit to doing so for fear of looking like he's surrendering to Trump's blackmail," said Ashley Tellis at Washington's Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "We could be heading into a needless crisis that unravels a quarter century of hard-won gains with India." Indian state refiners have in recent days stopped buying Russian oil as discounts narrowed and pressure from Trump rose. A more pressing challenge for India, analysts say, is the stark divergence between its priorities and Trump's political base on key issues such as work visas for tech professionals and offshoring of services. India has long been a major beneficiary of U.S. work visa programs and the outsourcing of software and business services, a sore point for Americans who have lost jobs to cheaper workers in India. Relations with India risk becoming a "football in American domestic politics," warned Evan Feigenbaum, a former senior State Department official under the Republican presidency of George W. Bush. "Issues that directly touch India are among the most partisan and explosive in Washington, including immigration and deportation, H1B visas for tech workers, offshoring and overseas manufacturing by U.S. companies, and technology sharing and co-innovation with foreigners," he wrote in a LinkedIn post. Since a 2008 deal to cooperate on civilian nuclear technology, the two countries have deepened intelligence sharing and defense cooperation and expanded interactions with Australia and Japan through "the Quad" grouping aimed at containing China's dominance in the Indo-Pacific. Pipelines of liquid cargo near a port in India. Indian state refiners have stopped buying Russian oil as discounts narrowed and pressure from Trump rose. | REUTERS But fractures have appeared, despite Modi's rapport with Trump in his first term and then former U.S. President Joe Biden. Images in February of Indians deported by the U.S. on military planes, their hands and legs shackled, horrified the country just days before Modi went to see Trump seeking to stave off high tariffs. The relationship was also seriously tested in late 2023 when the U.S. said it had foiled a plot with Indian links to kill a Sikh separatist leader on U.S. soil. New Delhi has denied any official connection to the plot. "The Modi regime's credibility in the U.S. has gone down," said Sukh Deo Muni, a former Indian diplomat and a professor emeritus at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. "And maybe there are people who think that India or Modi had to be brought back on track, if not taught a lesson. And if that trend continues, I'm quite worried that the challenge is quite powerful and strong for India to navigate." One Indian government source said India needs to gradually repair ties with the U.S. while engaging more with other nations that have faced the brunt of Trump tariffs and aid cuts, including the African Union and the BRICS bloc that includes Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa. India is already making some moves with Russia and China. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to visit New Delhi this year and on Tuesday, Russia said the two countries had discussed further strengthening defense cooperation "in the form of a particularly privileged strategic partnership." India has also boosted engagement with China, a change after years of tensions following a deadly border clash in 2020. Modi is set to visit China soon for the first time since 2018. "Russia will attempt to exploit the rift between the U.S. and India by proposing the restoration of the Russia-India-China trilateral and new projects in defense," said analyst Aleksei Zakharov at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. "India will undoubtedly be mindful of structural factors such as sanctions against Russia and will seek to find a compromise with the Trump administration."
The Diplomat
7 hours ago
- The Diplomat
The Strategic Ripples of China's Mega-Dam for Bangladesh
When Chinese Premier Li Qiang broke ground on the world's most ambitious dam – the Medog Hydropower Station on the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet – global headlines fixated on its scale and scope. With a projected cost of $167 billion and an expected capacity triple that of the Three Gorges Dam, the project is a technological marvel. But it's also a geopolitical flashpoint. As the Yarlung Tsangpo becomes the Brahmaputra in India and the Jamuna in Bangladesh, control over its headwaters bestows tremendous leverage. The Medog dam is thus a bellwether for future negotiations on water-sharing – and a potential harbinger of regional water insecurity. For Bangladesh, far downstream yet acutely affected, the stakes are existential. The project raises serious questions regarding water security, riverine ecology, and diplomatic leverage – especially in the context of Bangladesh's long-stalled water-sharing deal with India over the Teesta River. As Dhaka cautiously monitors China's plans, the broader implications for regional water agreements, particularly Bangladesh-India negotiations, are beginning to crystallize. China maintains that the Medog project will be a 'run-of-the-river' project that neither diverts nor withdraws water, but Bangladesh remains cautious. In January 2025, during a bilateral meeting in Beijing, Dhaka voiced concern about the dam and formally requested detailed technical information. In response, Chinese officials and diplomats have reached out to assure Dhaka that its hydropower project is intended solely for electricity generation and will not affect the flow of water to downstream countries. Six months later, Bangladesh now appears to have accepted Beijing's verbal assurances and explanation, with Foreign Adviser Touhid Hossain stating that Bangladesh currently sees no 'reason for concern.' The rationale behind Bangladesh's shift in stance was reflected in Hossain's remarks: 'We cannot stop it… We have to see that we are not harmed.' The realist tone of this statement reflects Bangladesh's limited leverage in this geopolitical equation. Nevertheless, Dhaka insists on transparency and access to hydrological data as a baseline requirement for trust-building. The situation is further complicated by India's position. Since the river flows through Indian territory before reaching Bangladesh, India is also closely monitoring China's activities. Hossain confirmed that India has 'interests here' and is 'looking into the matter.' This triangulation of interests brings to light the fragile web of interdependencies in the region's river systems and complicates existing bilateral dynamics. The concern lies not just in what is being built but how. Water, traditionally a source of life, increasingly resembles a strategic tool – even a 'weapon' – in South Asia. Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu likened the Medog dam to a 'water bomb' that poses an existential threat to tribal populations and riverine ecosystems. A 2020 report by the Lowy Institute even argued that China's control over Tibetan rivers gives it a 'chokehold on India's economy.' In 2024, Chinese authorities arrested hundreds of Tibetans protesting hydropower development, reinforcing concerns over top-down, opaque decision-making. In Bangladesh, Malik Fida Khan, the executive director of the Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services, warned that 70 percent of the dry-season flow in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river basin comes via the Brahmaputra. If upstream interventions destabilize this flow, Bangladesh's already climate-stressed water security could collapse. Sharif Jamil of Riverkeeper Bangladesh called China's plan for the Medog project 'unilateral and geographically sensitive,' emphasizing that without transparent consultation, Bangladesh risks compounded ecological, hydrological, and socio-economic shocks. The project has added urgency and a new layer of complexity to the India-Bangladesh Teesta River water-sharing negotiations. For over a decade, Dhaka has awaited New Delhi's approval of a long-pending agreement to ensure equitable distribution of Teesta waters. However, domestic political opposition in India – particularly from the state of West Bengal – has delayed the deal. Now, with China entering the regional hydrological calculus, Bangladesh might find both risks and opportunities. On one hand, the growing strategic importance of transboundary rivers may compel India to be more forthcoming in its negotiations with Bangladesh, lest Dhaka turn increasingly toward Beijing for cooperation on water issues. On the other hand, India's own security and ecological concerns vis-à-vis China may lead it to further entrench its positions on all water-sharing matters, including the Teesta River. From a broader perspective, the situation presents an opportunity for Dhaka to push for a more institutionalized, basin-wide approach to water governance involving all five riparian states: China, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh. Experts like Sharif Jamil argued that Bangladesh should ratify the 1997 U.N. Watercourses Convention and spearhead a joint framework to manage the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin as a whole. This multilateral vision offers two-fold benefits: it would build a norms-based framework for regional water governance and shield Bangladesh from being caught in a Sino-Indian tug-of-war. In an era where rivers are becoming instruments of diplomacy and conflict alike, Dhaka must flow with the current but steer its own course. Bangladesh faces considerable obstacles in navigating this complex hydro-political landscape. Its draft Teesta agreement with India, proposed in 2011, still faces resistance from the West Bengal government, highlighting the challenge of balancing federal-state interests even within bilateral frameworks. China's increasing footprint in the Teesta Master Plan also positions Bangladesh delicately between two powerful neighbors. This necessitates technical foresight and diplomatic agility to prevent backlash from New Delhi while ensuring cooperation from Beijing.
NHK
8 hours ago
- NHK
Trump signs executive order slapping extra 25% tariff on imports from India
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order imposing an additional 25 percent tariff on goods from India, citing the country's purchase of crude oil and oil products from Russia. The move is seen as Trump's attempt to increase pressure on Russia as the White House is demanding that Moscow agrees to a ceasefire with Ukraine. White House sources say the move will raise the total tariff on Indian imports to the US to 50 percent, as Washington had already announced plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on New Delhi. A statement by India's external affairs ministry released the same day reads that the country reiterates "that these actions are unfair, unjustified and unreasonable." It goes on to say that "India will take all actions necessary to protect its national interests."
