1.Tata Motors approaches Italy's Agnelli family to buy controlling stake in Iveco: Reuters

Italy's Agnelli family is in talks over the possible sale of truck maker Iveco, three sources told Reuters, with two mentioning Tata Motors as a potential buyer. India's Tata Motors has approached Exor, the Agnellis' investment company, over its controlling stake in Iveco Group, two of the sources said. A sale would not include Iveco's IDV defence business.

Exor owns a 27.1% stake in Iveco, with 43.1% of voting rights in the Turin-based truck maker. Iveco, which also makes buses and engines, has a market cap of around 4.2 billion euros ($4.9 billion)

It is the smallest among Europe's leading truck makers - a market led by Volvo, Daimler and Traton and has often been seen as a potential M&A candidate by investors and analysts. However, its presence in the sensitive business of defence has so far complicated any possible deal and restricted the pool of potential buyer.

2.EV giant Tesla's India entry may have more symbolic than strategic value: Business Standard

Tesla, the poster boy of full self-driving cars, has finally cruised into India. Globally, whenever Tesla enters a market, it increases the penetration of battery electric vehicles (BEVs). In India, however, that might not be the case. 

Given its price — ₹60 lakh for the Model Y rear-wheel drive (RWD) and ₹68 lakh for the Model Y long range — Tesla sits firmly in the luxury EV segment in India and is, therefore, unlikely to impact existing mass-market EV players. 

Analysts believe Tesla will first focus on building the Model Y brand before expanding — both in terms of volume and models.

The Model Y costs more than six times the average selling price of cars in India, and even over the next five years, it is expected to cost 2.4 times more, said Jay Kale, analyst with investment bank Elara Capital.

“In the EU, the US, and China, this ratio is around 1.0–1.5 times, and with that, Tesla’s BEV market share is in the range of 10–15 per cent in the EU and China, and 44 per cent in the US. This translates into an overall PV (personal vehicle) market share of less than 5 per cent in these regions,” Kale said in a note on Wednesday. 

3.India markets regulator looks to extend tenure of derivatives contracts: Reuters

India is looking to improve the quality of the derivatives market by extending the tenure and maturity of such contracts, an official at the markets regulator said in a speech.

"We must look for further ways to further deepen our cash equities markets, even as we look to improve the quality of our derivatives market by extending the tenure and maturity of the products and solutions on offer," said Ananth Narayan, a whole-time member at the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).

There’s an extreme imbalance between cash markets and the derivatives market — the options turnover is sometimes 350x that of the cash market. Moreover, most options trading is short-term, which discourages capital formation, Narayan added.

Most small traders lose in options markets, according to SEBI’s own data. In part, that’s because of institutional players like Jane Street, an American trading firm that SEBI accused of market manipulation.

4.Jane Street’s Trading Secrets Spill Into Open and Face Rivals’ Scrutiny: Bloomberg

“A poster with the WWII slogan “Loose Lips Sink Ships” long adorned the interior of Jane Street Group’s offices — an unsubtle reminder to staff of the secrecy prized by one of Wall Street’s most profitable firms.

Now the 25-year-old trading powerhouse is in the glare of a global spotlight.

It’s a privately controlled company so clandestine that it doesn’t publicly identify a leader at the top. A staffer who once tried to track down an email list of governing partners recalled giving up, learning that Jane Street doesn’t want something like that circulating, not even to people working there.

Then — out of the blue — a window into the firm opened this month when a regulator in India announced a bombshell $564 million seizure of proceeds from what Jane Street once labeled its most profitable trading strategy. The regulator didn’t just outline how the stock and derivatives purchases work, it posted downloadable charts that can scale to the size of a projector screen in perfect focus. Suddenly, the world could pick bit-by-bit through sprees of profitable trading, such as a six-hour session in January 2024 that generated more than $80 million of profit.

Competitors and other financial professionals have pored over the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s 105-page order and data in the days since. Swapping insights and figures from Jane Street’s privately circulated bond prospectuses, the sleuths are parsing what the episode in India says about the rest of the company’s $20.5 billion in annual trading revenue, now eclipsing Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.’s hauls. Rivals said they’ve been trying to figure out how Jane Street started out-earning them so quickly.

One of the top takeaways is that — from trading practices, to leadership structure and even an obsession with an arcane programming language — Jane Street doesn’t operate like most other Wall Street giants.

“People are sitting there reverse-engineering this whole thing,” said Daniel Schlaepfer, chief executive officer of Select Vantage, a smaller trading firm. “It's almost like getting professional tutoring on what Jane Street does.’’

5.How AI Is Redefining Managerial Roles: Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review points to a study that looked at how 50,032 global software developers worked over two years. Here are the two broad findings.

1. Increased Autonomy: AI enables workers to solve problems independently, reducing the need for coordination and supervision. Developers using Copilot were less likely to ask managers or peers for help, allowing them to work more self-sufficiently.

2. Enhanced Exploration Time: By accelerating core tasks like coding, AI frees up time for learning, experimentation, and strategic thinking—activities that were previously limited by time constraints.

6.Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is considering cutting jobs and relocating more than 1,000 employees to try and control spiraling costs at its futuristic NEOM development: Semafor

 The relocations, which may start later this year, would reverse a previous policy that staff be based on the largely barren construction site.

Bringing more staff to Riyadh is intended to strengthen oversight of the project, which has ballooned from the initial $500 billion estimate to $1.5 trillion. Saudi Arabia has been reviewing some of its spending plans as new initiatives have emerged since NEOM’s launch, such as hosting World Expo 2030 in Riyadh and the men’s soccer World Cup in 2034.

7.Suicide rates rising in older men, CDC data reveal :STAT

“After a decade-long rise in suicide rates among young Americans — and with depression diagnoses soaring in this age group during the pandemic — the U.S. surgeon general issued a report in 2021 warning about the “devastating” state of youth mental health. The American Psychological Association declared it a “crisis.” It was part of a prolonged advocacy campaign to raise awareness about the problem and possible solutions, and finally, in 2022 and 2023, there were signs of success: Suicide rates for teens and young adults began to fall.

Meanwhile, another demographic has gone largely overlooked. The people most at risk from suicide aren’t those in crisis in adolescence or midlife, but men age 75 and older.

8.OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Agent in competition with Microsoft: The Verge

OpenAI on Thursday launched features for ChatGPT subscribers to create and edit spreadsheets and presentations, generate reports and automate tasks using web browsers.

The new capabilities, combined with document collaboration features OpenAI has developed but not yet released, could boost ChatGPT as an enterprise product in competition with Microsoft Office and Google Workspace.

9.Netflix uses AI effects for first time to cut costs: BBC

CEO Ted Sarandos said the Argentine scifi show The Eternauts used AI to generate footage of a building collapsing, which “just wouldn’t have been feasible for a show in that budget.”

Using AI allowed the creators to make the scene 10 times faster than with traditional special effects. Creators are concerned about AI in filmmaking — it was one of the subjects of the 2023 Hollywood strike — but as in every industry, if something makes work cheaper or easier, it will end up being used.

10.Crypto momentum: Bloomberg

Cryptoassets surged past $4 trillion in value for the first time today, a milestone that puts the digital universe in the same league as Nvidia’s market cap. 

Enthusiasts are cheering US legislation approved late yesterday that provides regulatory clarity on stablecoins — a type of cryptocurrency designed to hold its value and settle payments instantly. Approval of the so-called Genius Act was part of what supporters have dubbed “Crypto Week.”

Having reached a record high above $123,000 on Monday in anticipation of Crypto Week, the reaction to the vote from Bitcoin and other cryptoassets was muted. The world’s largest cryptocurrency was trading just under $119,000 this morning, though options data provided by Deribit suggest a ramp up to $130,000 may be possible by August. Bitcoin has gained 27% this year.