India's Wipro beats first-quarter revenue estimates
Consolidated revenue at India's fourth-largest IT services provider stood at 221.35 billion rupees ($2.57 billion), rising 0.8% from a year earlier and topping analysts' average estimate of 220.59 billion rupees, according to LSEG data.
($1 = 86.0390 Indian rupees)
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The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
Recognised Palestinian state could develop disputed gas resources, expert says
Recognition of Palestine as a state would put beyond doubt that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is entitled to develop the natural gas resources of the Gaza Marine field, according to one of the experts that worked on the stalled project. Michael Barron, the author of a new book on Palestine's untapped gas reserves, has suggested the field could generate $4bn (£3bn) in revenue at current prices and it is reasonable that the PA could receive $100m a year over 15 years. He said the revenues 'would not turn the Palestinians into the next Qataris or Singaporeans, but it would be their own revenue and not aid, on which the Palestinian economy remains dependent'. Plans to develop the field have a near 30-year history, during which time legal controversies over ownership have stalled exploration. A law firm representing Palestinian human rights groups sent a warning letter to the Italian state-owned firm ENI that it should not exploit the gas fields in an area known as Zone G, where six licences were awarded by Israel's energy ministry. In their letter, the lawyers claim that roughly 62% of the zone lies in maritime areas claimed by Palestine and, as such, 'Israel cannot have validly awarded you any exploration rights and you cannot validly have acquired any such rights'. Palestine declared its maritime borders, including its exclusive economic zone, when it acceded to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 2015, and set out a detailed claim in 2019. Israel is not a signatory to UNCLOS. Barron said recognition of Palestine, particularly by states with large oil firms registered in their jurisdiction, would effectively end the legal ambiguity, and provide the PA with not only a new secure source of income, but regular supplies of energy independent of Israel. Since the legal letter, ENI has told pressure groups in Italy that 'licences have not yet been issued and no exploratory activities are in progress'. Another group, Global Witness, claims the East Mediterranean Gas pipeline that runs parallel to the Gaza coastline is unlawful since it runs through Palestinian waters, and is not providing any revenue to the PA. The 56-mile (90km) pipeline transports gas from Ashkelon in Israel to Arish in Egypt, where it is then processed into liquefied natural gas for export, including to Europe. 'The Oslo Accords agreed in 1993 clearly give the Palestinian National Authority jurisdiction over territorial waters, the subsoil, power to legislate over oil and gas exploration and to award licences to do so,' Barron said. 'Control over natural resources was an important element of [the] state-building agenda of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Israeli exploitation of Palestinian resources was and remains a central part of the conflict.' Gas was discovered in the Gaza Marine field in 2000 in a joint venture owned by the BG Gas group, a giant privatised off-shoot of British Gas and the Palestinian Consolidated Contractors Company. The plan was for the gas to be used by the sole power station on the Gaza strip to end the territory's perennial energy shortages. Barron argues in his book – The Gaza Marine Story - that the fate of the project is a microcosm of how Israel worked to increase Palestinian dependence on Israel while at the same time trying to separate Palestinians from Israelis. The project was dogged by issues of commercial viability and an Israeli court ruling that the waters were a 'no-man's water', partly because the PA was not a sovereign entity with unambiguous powers to award licences. The court also did not resolve whether the rights to Palestinian territorial waters clearly provided for in the Oslo Accords included a Palestinian 'exclusive economic zone', a zone that normally extends 200 miles off the coast. The accords were only intended to be an interim arrangement before full statehood and so did not delineate the full maritime border. Territorial waters are normally defined as only 12 or 20 miles off the coast and Israel always argued that any licence for Gaza Marine 20 miles off the Gaza coast should be seen as a gift to the PA by Israel, and not a right. After Hamas took control the Gaza strip in 2007, Israel did not want the revenue to fall into its hands, so it blocked the development, prompting the BG group to put the project on hold and then eventually to quit. In June 2023 Israel approved plans for an Egyptian firm EGAS to develop the field, only for the war in Gaza to start. Gaza Marine is estimated to contain only 30 billion cubic metres (BCM) of natural gas, which is a small fraction of the more than 1,000 BCM contained in Israel's own territorial waters. Barron argued that Israel has its own gas supplies and so long as a Palestinian state with unified governance is recognised, Israel will have no motive or legal right to block Palestine exploiting its single greatest natural resource. The whole controversy around private sector investment in Israel's acknowledged occupation of Palestine moved centre stage with a report published last week by the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, warning corporations against sustaining what has been declared an unlawful occupation by the international court of justice (ICJ). She claims ICJ decisions place on corporate entities a prima facie responsibility 'to not engage and/or to withdraw totally and unconditionally from any associated dealings with Israel, and to ensure that any engagement with Palestinians enables their self-determination'. Her claim has been rejected wholesale by Israel.
Times
14 hours ago
- Times
How to get a nation of savers investing
A string of policy reforms that the government described as the 'widest-ranging' changes to the financial world in more than a decade are on their way. In a bid to create a wave of new investors, banks and other financial firms will be allowed to push savers towards the stock market; risk warnings on investment products could be watered down; and there will be an advertising campaign spelling out the benefits of investing. The changes have the potential to encourage the millions of savers with hefty amounts of cash languishing in low interest accounts to consider the stock market as an option for their savings. A new form of 'targeted support' could help those who cannot or do not want to pay for financial advice but could use some guidance on big decisions. The City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, found that 71 per cent of us hold a savings account, but just 39 per cent hold investments. We are far more likely to save into cash Isas than investment ones — £41.6 billion was paid into cash Isas compared with £28 billion into investment Isas in 2022-23, according to HM Revenue & Customs. The Barclays Equity Gilts study, which tracks the performance of different asset classes back to 1899, found that stocks have returned an average of 4.8 per cent a year after inflation over the past 125 years, compared with 0.5 per cent a year for cash savings. In the ten years to the end of 2024, stocks returned 1.8 per cent a year while cash lost 2.9 per cent a year in real terms. But there are risks with investing that many ordinary savers may be reluctant to take on. Here are some safeguards that we think the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, should consider. • The cheap and easy way to invest (without the risk) Industry experts warned that the Leeds Reforms, revealed after Reeves shelved plans to cut the cash Isa limit to nudge more savers towards the stock market, could amount to a quiet eroding of consumer protections. To make Reeves's revolution pay off, campaigners say that the government should ensure that City firms are not allowed to cash in through excessive charges and commissions. 'There is good in Reeves's plan. There's no doubt that people have far too much money in cash accounts and that they will struggle in retirement as a result,' said Robin Powell, who runs the investment education website The Evidence-Based Investor. 'But there's a risk that we are experiencing 'regulatory amnesia' — our collective tendency to forget why rules were put in place once the immediate crisis fades. Light regulation leads to crisis, crisis leads to tighter rules, tighter rules lead to calls for 'red tape cutting', which leads to light regulation. 'This is why we need a strong set of rules that dictate how banks and other financial companies behave when it comes to putting these reforms into practice.' Investors are typically charged a fee for the investment products they use. Investment fund fees, which are usually charged as a percentage of how much money you hold, range from as little as 0.05 per cent to 1.5 per cent or higher. These fees can eat into your returns over the long term. A fund that returns 3 per cent a year and costs 0.5 per cent would be worth about £37,500 over 30 years, but the same fund with a 2 per cent fee would be worth just £24,300. James Daley from the consumer consultancy Fairer Finance said: 'One of my main concerns is that financial firms will push consumers towards investments that are high-cost. They should have an obligation to only nudge consumers towards low-cost options. There is only one certainty when it comes to investing — and that is cost.' One way to manage this risk would be to introduce a fee cap on investment products that savers are nudged towards. It could work in a similar way to the cap on default pension funds, which workers are automatically enrolled into by their employers. These pensions cannot charge fees of more than 0.75 per cent, thereby protecting savers. It works well, and in reality most schemes charge significantly less than the cap. These rules could also be extended to investment exit fees and charges for buying and selling shares. Under its consumer duty rules, the Financial Conduct Authority already requires companies to ensure that any exit fees — charged when a customer wants to move their money out of an investment product — are fair and reflect the actual cost. These exit fees could also apply to any investment products that savers are 'nudged' into, and a cap that matches the average dealing charge across the industry could be placed on such products too. The chancellor suggests that 'savers with cash sitting in low-interest accounts' would be helped by the Leeds Reforms. While it is likely that many of these savers could benefit from considering the stock market as an alternative place for their cash, it will be less suitable for others — such as those who have the money lined up for a house deposit within the next year, or who use the account for their rainy day savings. Financial companies could use pop-up warnings, similar to the fraud warnings on mobile banking apps, that flag to the end user that there are circumstances where these 'nudges' might not apply or be beneficial. Powell said pop-up warnings should be added to private equity and alternative investments, which are being pushed under the reforms. Such investing often involves putting cash behind small, illiquid companies that have the potential to grow a lot — and quickly — but also come with a higher chance of failure. He said: 'Given the government's push towards these investments, we need mandatory risk warnings that actually mean something. People need to understand that these products cost more, that they're more complex, that you cannot get your money out easily and that they are far less transparent than traditional investments. Make these warnings unavoidable.' • How to build a portfolio that keeps its value At the moment there is a limit on the amount of compensation that the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) can demand for the mis-selling of financial products. The FOS is a free dispute resolution service that settles complaints between consumers and the financial firms that they use. It can demand that a business pays compensation and puts customers back in the financial position that they would have been if they had not been given bad advice, but the compensation is limited to £430,000 for complaints from April last year. The limit is £415,000 for complaints brought to the FOS the year before. Scrapping the limit would give consumers more confidence about any 'nudges' they get from investment firms over what to do with their cash. Since 2012 commission-based payments for investment advice have generally been banned in the UK. When financial advisers recommend a product, they are not allowed to take a percentage of the money you put into that product, but instead must charge you specifically for the advice — as a percentage fee or in pounds and pence terms. But the investment 'nudges' or recommendations that would be allowed under the new rules will not fall under investment advice, but instead be deemed 'targeted support'. While it is unlikely that the FCA will allow old-style commission to creep back into the selling or recommending of investment products, a strict ban on commission could be put in place to ensure that financial firms do not profit from pushing savers towards certain riskier products. Daley said: 'Just 20 years ago most of the banks were selling investment products and getting large fines for poor conduct and bad outcomes. We need to ensure we don't forget the lessons that we should have been learning from over the past couple of decades.' • Reeves is right, but she is walking a tightrope — with our cash Another risk for investors is 'consumer inertia' — where you end up paying more (or gaining less) for a financial product because you stick with a firm you already use. If your high street bank 'nudges' you towards an investment product, it might be easier to stick with the bank rather than to shop around. This could be fixed with a requirement that any firm 'nudging' a cash saver towards the stock market give information that relates to the whole of the market. For example, under rules from the Competition and Markets Authority, banks that offer current accounts have to display 'clearly and prominently' the satisfaction ratings scored by their competitors in comparison to their own scores. A similar approach could be taken under the reforms. For example, if a high street bank offers a ready-made investment portfolio with a fee of 0.7 per cent, it should be forced to flag that other companies offer a similar product for 0.3 per cent (even if both fall below the charge cap). If a financial company recommends a product, information could also be provided on alternative choices in the wider market. For example, a company that does not offer a low-cost global tracker fund should still need to explain the benefits of such a product to their customer. Tom Selby from the investment platform AJ Bell said: 'Investing is often seen as something that is only for relatively wealthy people, or something which you need a great deal of financial knowledge to get involved in. In fact, it is relatively easy, with straightforward products designed for ordinary people. And you don't need tens of thousands of pounds to get started. 'There is still a lot of work to be done to develop the plan, but this campaign could help to break some of the taboo around investing and encourage more people to get started.' How can the government protect consumers while getting us investing? Let us know in the comments
BBC News
14 hours ago
- BBC News
Members only: Inside the new playgrounds of India's rich and famous
For decades, the Indian elite have sought escape in Raj-era private clubs and gymkhanas, scattered around the swankiest neighbourhoods in the country's big cities, hillside resorts and cantonment to these quintessentially "English" enclaves, with their bellboys, butlers, dark mahogany interiors and rigid dress codes, has been reserved for the privileged; the old moneyed who roam the corridors of power - think business tycoons, senior bureaucrats, erstwhile royals, politicians or officers of the armed is where India's rich and powerful have hobnobbed for years, building social capital over cigars or squash and brokering business deals during golf sessions. Today, these spaces can feel strangely anachronistic - relics of a bygone era in a country eager to shed its colonial Asia's third largest economy breeds a new generation of wealth creators, a more modern and less formal avatar of the private members-only club - that reflects the sweeping economic and demographic changes under way in India - is emerging. This is where the newly well-heeled are hanging out and doing business. Demand for such spaces is strong enough for the international chain Soho House to plan two new launches in the capital Delhi and in south Mumbai in the coming months. Their first offering - an ocean-facing club on Mumbai's iconic Juhu Beach - opened six years ago and is wildly chain is one of a host of new club entrants vying to cater to a market that is booming in House started in London in the mid-90s as an antidote to the upscale gentlemen's clubs that lined Pall Mall. It came in as a refreshingly new concept: a more relaxed club for creators, thinkers and creative entrepreneurs, who might have felt like they didn't belong in the enclaves of the old years later, India's flourishing tech-driven economy of start-ups and creators has birthed a nouveau riche that's afforded Soho House exactly another such market opportunity."There's growth in India's young wealth, and young entrepreneurs really need a foundation to platform themselves," Kelly Wardingham, Soho House's Asia regional director, told the BBC. The "new wealthy require different things" from what the traditional gymkhanas the old clubs, Soho House does not either "shut off" or let in people based on their family legacy, status, wealth or gender, she says. Members use the space as a haven to escape the bustle of Mumbai, with its rooftop pool, gym and private screening rooms as well as a plethora of gourmet food options. But they also use it to drive value from a diverse community of potential mentors and investors, or to learn new skills and attend events and Maya, a young filmmaker, says her membership of the house in Mumbai - a city "where one is always jostling for space and a quiet corner in a cramped cafe" - has given her rare access to the movers and shakers of Mumbai's film industry - which might otherwise have been impossible for someone like her "without generational privilege".In fact, for years, traditional gymkhanas were closed off for the creative community. The famous Bollywood actor, the late Feroz Khan, once asked a gymkhana club in Mumbai for membership, only to be politely refused, as they didn't admit taken aback by their snootiness, is said to have quipped, "If you'd watched my movies, you would know I am not much of an actor."By contrast, Soho House proudly flaunts Bollywood star Ali Fazal, a member, on its in-house magazine cover. But beyond just a more modern, democratic ethos, high demand for these clubs is also a factor of the limited supply of the traditional gymkhanas, which are still very sought queues at most of them can extend "up to many years," and supply hasn't caught up to serve the country's "new crop of self-made businessmen, creative geniuses and high-flying corporate honchos", according to Ankit Kansal of Axon Developers, which recently released a report on the rise of new members-only mismatch has led to more than two dozen new club entrants - including independent ones like Quorum and BVLD, as well as those backed by global hospitality brands like St Regis and Four Seasons - opening in India. At least half a dozen more are on their way in the next few years, according to Axon market, the report says, is growing at nearly 10% every year, with Covid having become a big turning point, as the wealthy chose to avoid public these spaces mark significant shifts, with their progressive membership policies and patronage of the arts, literary and independent music scene they are very much still "sanctums of modern luxury", says Axon, with admission given out by invite only or through referrals, and costing several times more than the monthly income of most Soho House for instance, annual membership is 320,000 Indian rupees ($3,700; $2,775) - beyond what most people can afford. What's changed is that membership is based on personal accomplishment and future potential rather than family pedigree. A new self-made elite has replaced the old inheritors - but access remains largely out of reach for the average middle-class Indian. In a way the rising take-up for these memberships reflects India's broader post-liberalisation growth story – when the country opened up to the world and discarded its socialist galloped, but the rich became the biggest beneficiaries, growing even richer as inequality reached gaping proportions. It's why the country's luxury market has boomed, even as the high street struggles with tepid demand, with most Indians without money to spend on anything beyond the growing numbers of newly-minted rich present a big business 797,000 high-net worth individuals are set to double in number within a couple of years - a fraction of a population of 1.4 billion, but enough to drive future growth for those building new playgrounds for the wealthy to unwind, network and live the high BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, X and Facebook.
