The board of IDFC FIRST Bank on Thursday approved raising up to Rs 7,500 crore from Warburg Pincus and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) amid global uncertainties.

The board approved a preferential issue of equity capital (CCPS) amounting to approximately Rs 4,876 crore to Currant Sea Investments, an affiliate company of global growth investor Warburg Pincus and approximately Rs 2,624 crore to Platinum Invictus Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) managed by its Private Equities Department.

The proposed issues are subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals. The rationale behind this fundraising is that the bank plans to scale up its optimal profitability and aims to grow the overall loan book at 20 per cent for the next few years, the bank said in an investor presentation.

LG CNS, an information technology affiliate of South Korea's LG Electronics, said on Thursday it has signed agreements to develop electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure and smart city solutions in the United States.

Under a deal with the New York City Economic Development Corporation, LG CNS will install and operate EV charging stations at the Brooklyn Army Terminal (BAT), a former military supply base now being redeveloped into a modern commercial, manufacturing hub.

As part of the Pilots at BAT programme, the company will also implement a charging and discharging control system, along with a mobile app providing real-time energy usage data for users, according to LG CNS, reports news agency.

LG CNS also signed a separate contract with a U.S. government agency to build smart city infrastructure in Hogansville, Georgia.

The project includes the installation of smart poles and an integrated control system designed to improve public safety, connectivity and urban operations through AI-driven solutions.

Electric ride-hailing company BluSmart has temporarily stopped offering cab services in all three of its operating cities -- Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, and Bengaluru.

Customers using the BluSmart app are unable to book rides, with no time slots available until May 7.

This disruption comes just days after India’s market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) passed an interim order against Gensol Engineering Limited and its promoters Anmol Singh Jaggi and Puneet Singh Jaggi.

The two brothers, who co-founded BluSmart, have been accused of diverting loans meant for electric vehicle (EV) procurement to buy a luxury flat in Gurugram's DLF Camellias.

The SEBI’s order banned the Jaggi brothers from accessing the securities market and halted Gensol’s proposed stock split.

Gold prices hit a new record high in India on Wednesday, with the yellow metal trading at Rs 95,435 per 10 grams on the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX).

This marks a sharp jump of 1.69 per cent or Rs 1,579 during the day. The day began with gold opening at Rs 94,573 per 10 grams, and it quickly surged to the new milestone.

At the same time, gold prices also climbed to new highs in global markets. On the New York-based Commodities Exchange Inc. (COMEX), the June gold contracts reached $3,334.2 per ounce, a rise of 2.9 per cent intra-day.

This is the highest single-day gain in gold prices seen so far this week.

IT software major Wipro Ltd on Wednesday reported a 6.4 per cent sequential rise in net profit to Rs 3,569.6 crore for the fourth quarter of the financial year ended on March 31, 2025.

The increase in net profit on a year-on-year basis works out to 25.9 per cent.

The company gross revenue for the fourth quarter was at Rs 22,500 crore ($2,634.2 million), an increase of 0.8 per cent quarter-on-quarter and a 1.3 per cent rise year-on-year.

The IT major’s operating margin for the quarter stood at 17.5 per cent, expanding 1.1 percentage points year-on-year.

Google on Wednesday said that it removed 247.4 million ads in India last year, while suspending 2.9 million advertiser accounts in the country.

The top policy violations were financial services, trademark, abusing the ad network, personalised ads and gambling/games, the tech giant said in its ‘2024 Ads Safety Report’.

2024 was a major year for global elections, including in India. “As part of this effort, we continued to expand our identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers to new countries,” said the company.

In the past year alone, Google verified more than 8,900 new election advertisers and removed 10.7 million election ads from unverified accounts globally.

India’s office leasing activity in the January-March quarter (Q1) of 2025 rose to an all-time high of 19.46 million square feet (sq ft), with domestic occupiers taking up a record 8.82 million sq ft, according to a report released on Wednesday.

Global occupiers continued to remain the mainstay of leasing activity, nevertheless, driven primarily by GCCs, according to the report by global real estate firm JLL.

On a year-on-year basis, gross leasing for the top seven cities was up 28.4 per cent at the pan-India level and higher for all cities, barring Chennai, the report states.

Bengaluru was the leader for the fourth straight quarter in terms of leasing activity with accounting for 21.9 per cent, followed by Delhi-NCR with 21.6 per cent.

Leasing by domestic occupiers was year-over-year higher in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune.

GM Korea, the South Korean unit of General Motors, plans to increase production at its Incheon plant by about 9 per cent this year, the company's labour union said on Wednesday, easing concerns over a potential withdrawal amid growing uncertainty over the United States' tariff policies.

According to the union, the company recently said it would allocate an additional 21,000 vehicles to the plant in Bupyeong, Incheon, west of Seoul, for production this year.

The increase amounts to nearly 9 per cent of the plant's annual production capacity of 250,000 units, reports news agency.

The move comes as speculation has grown about a possible exit of GM from South Korea in response to Washington's 25 per cent tariff on imported vehicles.

In a shocking revelation, Gensol Engineering Limited (GEL) promoters Anmol Singh Jaggi and Puneet Singh Jaggi have been found to be diverting funds meant for electric vehicle (EV) procurement to buy a luxury apartment in Gurugram's upscale residential project -- The Camellias by DLF.

The findings were part of an interim order issued by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on April 15, which has led to a major crackdown against Gensol Engineering Limited (GEL) and its promoters.

The SEBI has barred both Jaggi brothers from holding any directorship in the company and restricted them from accessing the securities market.

According to the regulator, loans taken to buy EVs for the ride-hailing service BluSmart were routed through multiple entities and ultimately used for personal gains.

South Korean chipmakers will likely face only limited impact from the new US restrictions on exports of Nvidia’s H20 artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators to China, experts here said on Wednesday.

Nvidia said it has been notified by the US authorities that the company now requires a license to export its H20 chips to China for the indefinite future, reports news agency.

The H20 accelerators were the most advanced AI chip the company could still export to China under the existing US export ban on high-performance AI chips.

SK hynix supplies its eight-layer HBM3E, the fifth-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM), for the H20 chips. Samsung Electronics Co. does not supply HBM for this particular chip.