Assetz raises Rs 125 crore from Motilal Alternates
Assetz, a Bengaluru-based real estate firm, secured Rs 125 crore from Motilal Alternates. The fund will be used to acquire land on Old Madras Road. Assetz plans to develop a luxury residential community. The project's estimated Gross Development Value exceeds Rs 1,400 crore. The development will span 1.4 million square feet. It will house around 800 units.
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The Hindu
2 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Russia is not Iran, India can't cancel oil imports on U.S. demand: experts
India cannot cancel oil imports from Russia as it did six years ago with Iran and Venezuela, given the difference in the scale and importance of the relationship, said experts, warning that the U.S.'s actions against India were damaging the relationship built over decades. In 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump had in his first term, demanded that India 'zero out' its oil imports from Iran and Venezuela. India had eventually complied with the demand before the deadline in May 2019. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order levying a 25% penalty on top of 25% tariffs on Indian goods, unless India cut energy purchases from Russia, which currently make up more than 35% of its oil imports. The penalty would kick in by August 27 unless Russia stops the war in Ukraine. The threat is expected to add pressure on both India and Russia ahead of a meeting between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir Putin next week, and the upcoming visit by Mr. Putin to India for the annual summit with Mr. Modi. 'At the global level, Russia is not Iran,' former Indian Ambassador to the U.S. Arun Singh told The Hindu in an interview. 'We want Russia, as one of the major powers in the international context, to be an important partner of India, and there's a memory in India of Russia in the past having provided political support [and] ...defence technology that nobody else was willing to provide,' he added, also warning that if India were to cave in to Mr. Trump's demands, this would only increase the U.S.'s appetite to demand more concessions from India. According to scholar Brahma Chellaney, the U.S. move on Russian oil is a cover to strong-arm India into accepting trading terms the U.S. wants, including market access for agricultural products. '[Mr.] Trump is weaponising Russian oil purchases to force a largely one-sided trade deal on India,' said Mr. Chellaney, who is a Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. He pointed out that technically, the U.S. has not sanctioned Russian oil, nor has it subscribed to the European Union's latest price cap on it. Mr. Trump had also not penalised China, which is the world's largest importer of Russian oil. 'Cutting Indian purchases of Russian oil is unlikely to make him back off. He wants a trade deal on his terms,' Mr. Chellaney added. Until recently, India imported about 2 million barrels a day, and is the second largest importer of Russian oil. Mr. Singh pointed to the past 25 years as a period of building trust between the two countries, and a steady improvement in relations after the previous era, where India had seen the U.S. as a 'coercive and an unreliable partner' for its backing of Pakistan, the 1971 Bangladesh War intervention, and the 1998 sanctions on India for its nuclear tests. Since 2008, after the U.S. helped India win exemptions at the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group for doing nuclear trade, he said this perception seriously changed. He also said that the U.S. had supplied drones and winter clothing to support Indian forces during the India-China stand-off at the Line of Actual Control at 'short notice'. 'But because of what President Trump has done in India, there's a resurrection of the old and bitter memories of the U.S.,' Mr. Singh who is a Senior Fellow at Delhi-based Carnegie India and a Professor at Ashoka University. 'So President Trump and the U.S. may feel that they are putting some penalties on India, high tariffs, I would say that they are putting high tariffs and penalties, less on India, and more on the U.S.-India relationship. It will take some time for the relationship to come out from this shock that has been generated', he added.
Indian Express
2 minutes ago
- Indian Express
SBI Q1 profit jumps 12.48% to Rs 19,160 crore
The country's largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), on Friday reported a 12.48 per cent growth in its net profit at Rs 19,160 crore during the quarter ended June 2025, compared to Rs 17.035 crore in the year-ago period. 'There has been a good containment of operating expenses. Besides, on a year-on-year basis, our treasury gains have also added to profit,' Setty said. While the bank was able to maintain its core net interest income, it did not see a major fall in its net interest income (NII), despite almost 30 per cent of the book being repriced immediately on the external benchmark linked lending rate (EBLR) front, he said. Following a 100 basis points (bps) cut in the repo rate between February and June 2025, all loans linked to the repo rate have been reduced by a similar margin. The bank's non-interest income jumped 55 per cent, on back of a 352 per cent growth in forex income. The lender's net interest income fell marginally by 0.13 per cent to Rs 41,072 crore. Net interest margin (NIM) of the lender dropped by 33 basis points (bps) to 3.02 per cent in Q1FY26, compared to 3.35 per cent in the year-ago period. Setty said the growth in NIM is likely to be U-shaped, with moderation in Q1 and Q2, and pick up in the fourth quarter of the current fiscal. Gross non-performing loans (NPAs) improved to 1.83 per cent from 2.21 per cent, and net NPA stood at 0.47 per cent, as against 0.57 per cent. The bank's gross advances increased by 11.61 per cent to Rs 42,54,516 crore and domestic advances registered a growth of 11.06 per cent. Loans to small and medium enterprises (SME) grew by 19.1 per cent, followed by agri advances which rose 12.67 per cent. Retail personal advances grew by 12.56 per cent. The bank's corporate advances recorded a slower growth of 5.7 per cent on y-o-y basis and a quarter-on-quarter decline of 3 per cent. Setty attributed the muted growth in corporate loans to delay in investment decisions due to tariff related uncertainties, shift by companies from banks to market instruments for funding and on account of pre-payments. 'We have seen that the utilisation of working capital which was 62 per cent in Q1 of FY25 has come down to 58 per cent now. Also, we have seen that some of the large corporates are accessing the commercial paper (CP) market basically to replace the working capital limits,' the SBI chairman said. He expects the corporate loan book to grow at 10 per cent in the third quarter of FY26. The bank has a total corporate loan book pipeline of Rs 7 lakh crore. Commenting on the impact of the higher tariffs on the banking system, Setty said banks have limited exposure to sectors likely to be affected. These include leather, chemicals, footwear, gems and jewellery, textiles and shrimp. The bank's share price closed at Rs 804.55 apiece, down 0.09 per cent on Friday after the quarterly results were declared.
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Business Standard
2 minutes ago
- Business Standard
Wall Street and AI startups are fighting over entry-level quants
At a rooftop bar on Manhattan's Lower East Side, roughly 150 quant researchers met with employees at the artificial-intelligence startup Anthropic who implored them to consider a life away from Wall Street. Over plates of potstickers and popcorn chicken, they rubbed shoulders at the June mixer with former hedge fund quants-turned-Silicon Valley evangelists who encouraged them to apply for jobs at Anthropic, according to the company. This month, the San Francisco-based firm is going global with another quant 'social hour' in London. The recruiting campaign mirrors similar efforts by rivals OpenAI and Perplexity AI. And a number of leading figures in the AI industry already come with quant backgrounds, including OpenAI Chief Research Officer Mark Chen and Perplexity co-founder Johnny Ho. But quants lured by dreams of building AI models and tools instead of profit-seeking algorithms for traders — often for lofty pay and benefits comparable to the world of finance — also face the risk of disappointment. 'The pitch is 'come and build the machine god,'' said Agustin Lebron, a former Jane Street trader who now works at a systematic trading startup. 'But I suspect that, for a lot of those people, it'll end up being 'come and figure out how to make people buy things from ads.'' Still, the AI industry's competition with finance is noticeably heating up. For Wall Street, it's an unwelcome wrinkle in an already-brutal war for quant talent. Unlike financial firms, AI companies aren't covered by the non-competition agreements that keep many of these researchers from easily switching jobs. 'I'd estimate we've seen a 40–50% increase over the past 12–18 months in AI-native and software companies specifically asking for talent with quantitative finance backgrounds,' tech recruiter Mike Doonan said. Entry-level quants are eligible for base salaries of as much as $300,000, based on external job listings, but that doesn't include what can be considerable bonus targets. AI firms today can offer comparable base salaries, with compensation packages bolstered with equity rather than bonuses. Next Big Thing According to an analysis of LinkedIn announcements, social media posts and company news sites conducted by employment tracking company Live Data Technologies, firms including Jane Street and Citadel Securities have lost quants to AI firms over the past year. Aron Thomas and Charles Guo both left Jane Street earlier this year to join Anthropic. In an interview, they praised their former firm as a great place to work but said they were drawn to the excitement of being part of the next big thing. 'It became very clear quite quickly that AI is going to change a lot of things and drive many changes in the world, and it seemed pretty important to be involved,' said Guo. Jane Street declined to comment for this story. Citadel also declined to comment on personnel matters, but pointed to growing interest in the firm's own internship program, which saw 108,000 applicants for this summer, up 20% from last year. While OpenAI also declined to comment, its chief executive officer Sam Altman touted quant-focused recruitment events in an April post on X. Noam Brown, an ex-quant and top researcher at the company, weighed in, noting that recruits don't need to take a pay cut anymore. Perplexity's Ho said the company pays $200,000 base salaries but makes up the difference somewhat with equity. He stressed that the firm's pitch to quants isn't mainly financial, though. Instead, it was the opportunity to take on 'new and more exciting challenges,' said Ho, who previously worked at Tower Research Capital. Quant Skills Quants are uniquely adept at minimizing latency in algorithms, which makes them desirable to AI developers competing to ensure users get responses as quickly as possible from the large language models that power generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. And much like AI research, quantitative trading involves sifting through vast amounts of unstructured data. What's more, firms like Anthropic and Perplexity are pushing more into financial services offerings. For its part, Anthropic said in a statement that it's after 'the rigorous analytical thinking and empirical research methods' that quants possess. Such skills have 'substantial overlap with the technical challenges of developing safer and more capable AI systems,' the company said, adding that it's going to keep hiring people with specialized backgrounds as it scales. Quant firms have occasionally sued employees departing for rivals. But litigation is unlikely for quants moving to AI labs, which don't directly compete with financial firms. Moreover, California — where most big AI companies are based — largely prohibits non-competition agreements. Ho said Wall Street has hurt itself with non-competes. 'They are becoming more and more secretive,' he said. There are signs that Wall Street is attempting to hit back against the poaching attempts of AI companies. For example, Iain Dunning, who oversees AI at Hudson River Trading, posted on X in May: 'Are you a researcher at OAI/Anthropic/etc and tired of overhiring, the orgchart chaos, the lowered talent bar, want to move to NYC, or just want to do something different?'
