1.India has good weather news.

After private forecaster Skymet predicted a normal monsoon this year, the India Meteorological Department said that El Nino conditions are easing and the country can expect abundant rains. The monsoon is the single biggest factor impacting the Indian economy. 

India is likely to see above-normal rainfall in the four-month monsoon season (June to September) with cumulative rainfall estimated at 106% of LPA (87 cm)," India Meteorological Department (IMD) director general Mrutyunjay Mahapatra said.

2.From Sweden with love: A $5-billion EQT bonanza for India

After investing about $2 billion in India last year, Swedish private equity firm EQT is lining up deals that could lead to another $5 billion worth of investments in the country this year.

EQT got its first taste of India in October 2022 after it acquired Baring Private Equity Asia—which once owned Hexaware Technologies Ltd—and has since signalled a strong investment appetite for the country.

Further, EQT’s expansion in the country is also because it is now looking at multiple sectors such as healthcare and financial services in addition to its historic preference for IT services, where it has struck gold multiple times before.

Last year, in June, EQT (then known as BPEA EQT) acquired a 60% stake in in-vitro fertilisation chain Indira IVF in a deal valuing the business at about $1.1 billion. 

A month later, EQT and India-based PE firm ChrysCapital announced the acquisition of a 90% stake in Credila Financial Services from HDFC, valuing the business at ₹10,300 crore, or $1.2 billion. In December, EQT acquired a majority stake in IT services company Indium Software for an undisclosed sum.  The PE firm (including BPEA's record) has invested about $9.45 billion in India over the previous 5 years.

3.Apple is reportedly in talks with the Chennai-based Murugappa Group and the Tatas to produce camera modules for iPhones as it moves more links of its supply chain to India. 

4.Singapore’s prime minister on Monday announced plans to step down in a month, paving the way for only the third leadership transition in the city-state’s nearly 60-year history. 

Singapore’s deputy prime minister, the heir apparent since 2022 will take over from 72-year-old Lee Hsien Loong, who led the global financial hub for two decades. The choreographed transition is designed to preserve Singapore’s “reputation as a stable spot through times of economic and geopolitical turbulence,” The Wall Street Journal wrote. It’s part of an “unprecedented breadth” of leadership turnover in the region, said Aaron Connelly, a Singapore-based fellow at the IISS think tank. After Lee steps down, Brunei and Indonesia will be the only members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations whose leaders took office before 2021.

5.Netflix’s New Film Strategy: More About the Audience, Less About Auteurs

Netflix now wants to tightly control the stories of the films it commissions and produce more diverse films across budgets. This may end the parade of so-called genius filmmakers who are used to near-unlimited budgets and creative freedom. 

Dan Lin arrived as Netflix’s new film chief on April 1, and he has already started making changes. He laid off around 15 people in the creative film executive group, including one vice president and two directors. (Netflix’s entire film department is around 150 people.) He reorganized his film department by genre rather than budget level and has indicated that Netflix is no longer only the home of expensive action flicks featuring big movie stars, like “The Gray Man” with Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans or “Red Notice” with Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson.

Rather, Mr. Lin’s mandate is to improve the quality of the movies and produce a wider spectrum of films — at different budget levels — the better to appeal to the varied interests of Netflix’s 260 million subscribers. He will also be changing the formulas for how talent is paid, meaning no more enormous upfront deals.

6.China reported higher-than-expected economic growth, but analysts voiced concern over other downbeat indicators. 

The world’s second-biggest economy grew at 5.3%year-on-year in the first quarter, further buoying hopes the country can escape a post-COVID malaise: Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs last week lifted their forecasts for 2024 economic growth.

Yet separate data showed industrial production and retail sales were well below expectations, questions remain over how Beijing will address a mammoth debt load, and Crédit Agricole’s chief China economist told Bloomberg of concerns that growth above policymakers’ 5% target could dissuade them from carrying out what analysts see as much needed economic reforms and stimulus.

7.Salman Rushdie’s new memoir, Knife, has just been published.

In it the Booker Prize-winner details his account of surviving a stabbing in 2022 — three decades after a fatwa from Iran calling for his death. Rushdie, who was left blind in one eye, told CBS News that he had a “premonition”of the assault days before it took place and described his survival as a kind of miracle in spite of his lack of spiritual belief. “I certainly don’t feel that some hand reached down from the skies and guarded me,” he said. “But I do think something happened which wasn’t supposed to happen. And I have no explanation for it.”