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- Arvind's newsletter- Weekend edition
1.Vistara-Air India get CCI approval, with some conditions, reports Economic Times
The long pending merger of fully owned Tata airline Air India and sister airline Vistara, came through weeks after the watchdog raised concerns about market power.
The merged airline may pose a challenge to local rival and market leader, IndiGo. The said consolidation will make Air India, India’s leading domestic and international carrier with a combined fleet of 218 aircraft, making it India’s largest international carrier and second largest domestic carrier, the airline said in an announcement relating to the merger.
As part of the merger transaction, SIA shall also invest Rs 2,059 crore in Air India. Post the consolidation, SIA shall hold 25.1% shareholding in Air India.According to data analytics firm Cirium, the entity will have 49% of the total flights on the Delhi-Mumbai route. IndiGo also has a strong presence on the route with 31% of total flights. Similarly, on Delhi-Bengaluru, the second busiest, the combined Air India group will have 52% share of total flights. IndiGo has a 35% share.
2.Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail in talks to raise $2.5 billion, reported Reuters
Three sources said the target fund raise of $2.5 billion is part of a combined $3.5 billion target the firm has set for itself, a part of which- $1 billion - came from Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and was announced last month.
Morgan Stanley is advising Reliance on the process, said two sources with direct knowledge.All the three sources declined to name potential investors. But the first source said Reliance was talking to at least two U.S.-based investors, while the other two sources said there was growing interest from existing foreign investors of Reliance, including some sovereign wealth funds.
In 2020, Reliance Retail raised $5.71 billion by selling a 10.09% stake to investors including KKR, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, General Atlantic and the United Arab Emirates' Mubadala. Ambani said this week its 2020 fund raise valued the business at around $52 billion, and "in less than three years, the valuation of retail has almost doubled."
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3.Neeraj Chopra is one of us, but he's also the best of us, reported ESPN.
Neeraj Chopra is on top of the world. He's just won India's first ever athletics World Championships gold. He has the India flag wrapped around his broad shoulders and every camera, phone and otherwise, in the house focused on his face. He's well and truly the centre of everyone's attention. Which is when he notices something: Pakistan's Arshad Nadeem, his friend, competitor and silver medalist on the day, is standing by himself at a distance, unsure of what to do. The moment Neeraj sees this, he calls Nadeem over to celebrate together.
At the time it was a nothing moment, missed by most, but from a broader perspective, it was everything. It was another example of what truly sets Neeraj Chopra apart. Read on.
4.The dawn of the Brics World Order.
In this piece in Unherd, Thomas Fazi opines that India is losing ground in the Brics order to China and USSR. Some excerpts:
Last week’s Brics summit was supposed to herald the dawn of a new world order. It would announce the end of the American era and the rise of another, this time belonging to developing nations. It would even, according to excitable analysts, be remembered as another Bandung Conference, the 1955 meeting that paved the way for a non-aligned movement during the Cold War.
The recent summit underscored the bloc’s inclination to use its increasing economic clout to challenge the Western-dominated global order. The combination of these two elements — growing economic muscle and political boldness — means that the bloc (to be renamed Brics Plus) has become a full-blooded geopolitical actor that can longer be ignored.
In demographic and economic terms, the power of the Brics, especially in light of its recent expansion, is all too evident. With its new members, the bloc will represent almost half of the global population. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), the most appropriate measure for comparing the relative economic size of countries, it already represented nearly one third of global GDP — more than the US-led G7’s economies, which account for 30%. The latest additions will bring its share up to 37%.
But the growing power of this new alliance is about much more than just GDP and the production of stuff;it’s also about resources. The integration of two of the world’s top oil producers — Saudi Arabia and the UAE — means that the Brics members will account for more than 40% of global oil production. The fact that two of America’s staunchest allies in the Persian Gulf have decided to join a China-led (and increasingly politicised) alliance exemplifies better than anything else the paradigm shift underway. US officials can downplay the significance of the event as much as they want, but its symbolic value is clear — especially if we consider that the two Gulf countries are joined by Iran, one of America’s most notorious arch-enemies.
For the US, however, the consequences are likely to be more than just symbolic. The move potentially represents a serious threat to the petrodollar system. During the Seventies, Saudi Arabia made a deal with the US in which it agreed to list its oil on the global market in dollars; the dollars received by Saudi Arabia for its oil sales — the so-called petrodollars — would then be recycled back into the US in the form of deposits and purchases of US Treasuries. This, combined with the fact that any country that wants to buy oil has to purchase dollars to do so, has allowed the US to run a massive trade deficit for decades without seeing the dollar depreciate. It has been one of the keystones of America’s post-war global hegemony, allowing Washington to sustain a regime of perpetual war, on top of exercising financial dominance over much of the world. Read on.
5.An investment boom in small modular reactors (SMR) is changing the nuclear industry.
The U.S. Air Force announced plans this week to use an SMR to power an Alaska air base, a first for the federal government. The Financial Times’s Gillian Tett reported that investor interest is rising elsewhere: NuScale, the Bill Gates-backed TerraPower, Hitachi, and Britain’s Rolls-Royce are all backing the technology. Tett argued that a recognition of increased electricity demand, a need for reliable zero-carbon energy without need for battery storage, and the rapid advances in small, cheap reactors is driving the change.