Arvind's Newsletter

1.India’s M&A activity in 2023 highest in almost a decade: Bain & Co.

Mergers and acquisitions in India last year surpassed volumes seen in most of the past decade, barring 2022, even as global M&A activity slowed, consultancy firm Bain & Co. said in a report. This year, the industry is likely to chalk up a similar run of deals, it added.

Indian companies struck more than 90 M&A deals worth a total of about $32 billion in 2023 (taking into account only deals that were worth over $75 million). In 2022, companies had struck 109 deals worth $118 billion.

 “The sustained momentum is driven by availability of attractive opportunities and assets, and heightened activity and disruption in sectors with structural tailwinds and favourable policies," Bain & Co.’s India chairman Karan Singh said in a report published on Tuesday.

“Renewable energy, infrastructure, logistics, and manufacturing accounted for one in every three deals over the past 18 months," he added.

2.LIC's $30 billion market rally gives IPO investors chance at redemption, reported Bloomberg

It’s taken almost two years but a 75% rally since late March has brought investors who purchased shares of Life Insurance Corp. of India in the nation’s biggest initial public offering close to recovering their investment.

The state-owned life insurer’s stock climbed 1.9% Tuesday, to close at its highest level since its IPO in May 2022. The climb over the past 10 months has coincided with a broader surge in Indian equities that’s added some $30 billion to LIC’s market value.  

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government raised a record $2.7 billion by selling shares in the country’s largest life insurance firm to investors that included millions of families that own the company’s policies. Concerns over LIC’s size, low-profit margins and rigid sales model compared with more agile private peers saw the stock at one point fall more than 40% below its offering price.

Gains in India’s broader equity market have been a boon to LIC, also the country’s largest investor with funds of more than $100 billion. An improved outlook for its premium business and prospects of a higher dividend payout has also spurred interest in the shares, according to analysts.

3.London Business School calls ‘peak MBA’ as visa reforms hit student demand

The vice-dean of London Business School has said that the traditional elite MBA course has “passed its peak” as escalating fees and new UK restrictions on student visas hit demand for longer programmes. LBS on Monday unveiled a new one-year version of its flagship 15-21-month master of business administration degree in response to increasing requests for shorter courses. 

“We recognised that the MBA as a degree is mature. It has many many years to run but we are past peak MBA,” Julian Birkinshaw, LBS vice-dean responsible for masters degree programmes, told the Financial Times.

He added that tighter courses were now more popular globally, as well as in the UK, than the traditional two-year programme first offered by Harvard University’s graduate management school in 1908. But demand for British two-year MBA programmes in particular had been hit by the government’s recent tightening of visa requirements, according to Nalisha Patel, European regional director at the Graduate Management Admission Council, the business school entrance exam administrator.

4.Rest Takes Hard Work

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a futurist and author’s essay in Time magazine is worth a read. Some excerpts:

“For people who have control over their daily schedules layer periods of "deep work," as Cal Newport calls it, and "deliberate rest," time to both recharge and let the creative subconscious examine problems that they haven't been able to solve through hard work. Many great scientists, mathematicians, and composers have daily routines in which they work intensively for a couple hours, take a long break, then work a couple more—and those four or five hours give you enough time to make steady progress on your work, and come up with some new, unexpected ideas. “

“People in high-stress, unpredictable jobs can't depend on such routines; but the most successful at dealing with the challenges of work rely on two other things: 

First, they have good boundaries between work and personal time. Second, they have serious hobbies—everything from quilting, to rebuilding classic cars, to running marathons—that are as absorbing as their work. This "deep play" illustrates another important point: the best rest is active, not just passive.

 We often think of “rest” as involving a bag of salty snacks and a TV remote, but working out or playing piano actually recharges your mental and physical batteries more effectively than binge-watching that hot new show.

 Long-term studies reveal another important rest hack. Taking annual vacations boosts your happiness, improves your cardiovascular health, and helps you age better compared to colleagues who chain themselves to the office.” 

5.Drone Identity Mix-Up

US officials said yesterday American air defenses failed to intercept a weekend drone strike in northeast Jordan that killed three US troops because the incoming drone was mistaken for an American one. A US drone had been scheduled to return to the military base, known as Tower 22, following a surveillance mission at the same time as the incoming hostile drone, a preliminary report found. 

The Pentagon also identified the three slain soldiers and raised the number of wounded US troops to at least 47. Roughly 350 US military personnel were deployed at the base at the time. US officials believe Iran-backed militants are behind the Jordan strike; Iran denies being involved. At least 165 attacks on US troops—98 in Syria, 66 in Iraq, and one in Jordan—have occurred since the Israel-Hamas war began in October. 

Separately, Israeli intelligence shared with the US claims that at least 12 UN workers had ties to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack and roughly 10% of its 13,000-person staff in Gaza had overall affiliations to militant groups.

Any U.S. retaliation for a deadly drone strike near the Jordan-Syria border could undermine efforts to reach a deal for Hamas’ release of Israeli hostages, illustrating the vexing and interlocked nature of the Middle East conflict.The expanding war points to the growing heft of Iran, increasingly able to leverage proxy militias in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and elsewhere to pressure the U.S., the French geopolitical analyst Dominique Moisi noted in Les Echos.

6.Neuralink CEO Elon Musk says the company has completed its first implantation of a brain-computer interface in a human subject

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he said "promising" brain activity had been detected after the procedure and the patient was "recovering well".

The company's goal is to connect human brains to computers to help tackle complex neurological conditions.

A number of rival firms have already implanted similar devices.

"For any company producing medical devices, the first test in humans is a significant milestone," said Professor Anne Vanhoestenberghe of King's College London.

7.Why China Would Struggle to Invade Taiwan

Although China continues to state a preference for unifying with Taiwan through peaceful methods, it has never renounced using force. Indeed, for the past two decades its military modernisation has focused on developing capabilities that would enable it to forcefully conquer Taiwan, ranging from ballistic missiles to advanced fighter jets and the world’s largest navy. China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, has increased the scale and sophistication of its military drills around Taiwan in recent years, honing its combat capabilities. As the prospect of gaining control of Taiwan peacefully becomes more remote, with Taiwanese identity rising and Taiwanese interest in unifying with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) declining, China could conclude that using force is the only way to achieve its political objectives.

China is investing huge sums to develop the capability to bring Taiwan under its control by force, if need be. At the same time, invading Taiwan or mounting a successful blockade would be the most complex military operation in modern history, and China’s military has not fought a major war in more than seven decades. Read on, David Slack’s article in CFR.