Moneycontrol Selects: Top stories this evening

A round-up of the big stories (Representative image)

Here is a collection of the most important stories this evening:

Air India bans Shankar Mishra, accused in pee-gate incident, for 4 months

Air India on January 19 banned accused Shankar Mishra for four months in connection with pee-gate. Mishra was banned for 30 days after the news broke earlier this month but the order has now been extended by a further four months. Mishra allegedly urinated on a woman passenger while drunk onboard an Air India New York-New Delhi flight on November 26, 2022.

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HUL Q3: Net profit rises 12% to Rs 2,505 crore, beats estimates

Hindustan Unilever (HUL) on January 19 reported a 12 percent
increase in its standalone net profit at Rs 2,505 crore for the December quarter. The company had reported a profit of Rs 2,243 crore in the year-ago period. The FMCG behemoth's standalone revenue from operations came in at Rs 15,228 crore, up 16 percent against Rs 13,092 crore logged in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal. The numbers beat estimates. According to a poll of brokerages, standalone revenue was expected to come in at Rs 14,904 crore, while profit after tax (PAT) was estimated to increase 8.3 percent to Rs 2,481 crore.

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Google vs CCI: SC declines to stay order, extends time to comply by a week

The Supreme Court on January 19 declined to stay Google's appeal against the Competition Commission of India (CCI)'s order slapping a Rs 1,338 crore penalty on the tech giant for exploiting its dominant position in the Indian market for Android. The court, however, gave the company another week to comply with the CCI order. It also asked National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) to dispose the case by March 31.

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Asian Paints Q3 result: Net profit jumps 6% to Rs 1,097 crore; misses estimates

Asian Paints on January 19 reported a 6.37 percent growth in consolidated net profit for the quarter ending December 2022 at Rs 1,097.06 crore. The company reported a profit of Rs 1,031.29 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year. Consolidated revenue from operations came in at Rs 8,636.74 crore, up 1.28 percent from Rs 8,527.24 crore in the year-ago quarter. The numbers were lower than estimates.

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RIL Q3 Preview | Revenue set to grow 21%, powered by Jio and retail

Diversified conglomerate and the biggest Nifty heavyweight Reliance Industries is expected to report a double-digit growth in consolidated revenue and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) for the October-December quarter, according to a Moneycontrol poll. Net profit is expected to grow 4.4 percent to Rs 16,366 crore from a year earlier and sequentially by 19.7 percent, according to the average of estimates of brokerages polled by Moneycontrol. Revenue is expected to rise 21 percent YoY to Rs 2.23 lakh crore.

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Davos 2023: Shift to old pension schemes may inhibit states’ spending, says Raghuram Rajan

State governments adopting the so-called old pension scheme may end up curbing current expenditure as they build up liabilities for the future, former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan has said.

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HUL hikes royalty payment to Unilever by 80 bps to 3.45% of turnover

The Board of Directors of Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) on January 19 approved the proposal to raise royalty payment to Uniliver Group, the parent company of the Indian firm. The new royalty and central services arrangement, which envisage a staggered increase of 80 basis points (bps) over a period of three years, is likely to come into effect on February 1, 2023, for a period of five years.

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December aviation data: Domestic passenger traffic rises 13.7% YoY, 9% MoM

India's domestic air traffic rose 13.7 percent year-on-year (YoY) to 127.35 lakh passengers in December 2022, data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on January 19 shows. More people flew in December than in November when 116.79 lakh passengers took to the skies. The air traffic, however, was still lower than pre-COVID levels. In December 2019, domestic airlines flew 130.18 lakh passengers.

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Davos 2023: Sanctioned Rs 10 crore for ONDC within 3 minutes of getting brief, says DPIIT secretary Anurag Jain

The idea of building an interoperable architecture for e-commerce was so convincing that DPIIT secretary Anurag Jain sanctioned Rs 10 crore within three minutes of being briefed, the top bureaucrat told Moneycontrol on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

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