9:30 am: Electronics & IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad at an event in New Delhi.
10:30 am: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, SEBI Chairman Ajay Tyagi and Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian at an event in New Delhi.
4:30 pm: RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya at an event in Mumbai.
5:00 pm: RBI to release weekly foreign exchange data in Mumbai.
LIVECHAT - QUIZ EAST The first of our Friday quizzes focuses on Asia and the week's top news. Tests your wits and googling speed at 11:00 am. To join the conversation, click on the link: https://forms.thomsonreuters.com/communities/ INDIA TOP NEWS • Earnings misses, rising debts: Indian Railways turnaround hits buffers India's mammoth state railways, much of them stuck in colonial times, have missed earnings targets for the third straight year and debts have shot up, documents seen by Reuters show, raising doubts about an ambitious modernisation drive.
• Old Mutual to sell India insurance JV stake to Kotak for $202 million Britain's Old Mutual Plc said it would sell its 26 percent stake in Kotak Mahindra Old Mutual Life Insurance Ltd to Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd for about 12.93 billion rupees ($201.7 million).
• Maruti Suzuki's Q4 profit up 16 percent on higher sales of premium models Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, the country's top-selling car maker, posted a 16 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit on higher sales of premium models such as the Brezza SUV and Baleno hatchback, but the profit was slightly below expectations.
• Kotak Mahindra sees bad loans falling, credit picking up India's Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd forecast a decline in bad loans and provisioning costs and a pick up in credit growth this financial year after reporting a better-than-expected 40 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit on Thursday.
• HUDCO sets price range for up to $191 mln IPO India's Housing and Urban Development Corp Ltd on Thursday set the price range for its initial public offering, the first by a state-run company in five years, to raise up to 12.2 billion rupees ($191 million).
• TVS Motor Q4 profit falls about 7 percent, but beats estimates India's TVS Motor Co Ltd said on Thursday net profit fell nearly 7 percent in the fourth quarter hurt by lower motorcycle sales at home, but beat analysts' estimates.
• Aurizon, Adani in talks on rail for Australian coal mine Aurizon Holdings Ltd is talking to Adani Enterprises about building a rail line for the Indian company's proposed $4 billion coal project in Australia, in a plan that could cut costs for the long delayed mine.
• India draws up $8.7 billion plan to turn urea exporter India aims to become a urea exporter by 2021 as the South Asian nation has drawn up a 555 billion rupee ($8.7 billion) plan to revive mothballed fertiliser plants and set up gas import and pipeline facilities in eastern India.
GLOBAL TOP NEWS • Trump says "major, major" conflict with N.Korea possible, but seeks diplomacy U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday a major conflict with North Korea is possible in the standoff over its nuclear and missile programs, but he would prefer a diplomatic outcome to the dispute.
• Japan's March core inflation, manufacturing miss forecasts, keep pressure on BOJ Japan's core consumer prices rose at a slower than expected pace in March and household spending fell more than expected in a worrying sign for the central bank that domestic demand won't be strong enough to generate sustained inflation.
• Google parent Alphabet's profit up 29 percent on strong ad sales Google parent Alphabet Inc posted a surge in profit and revenue on Thursday as its core advertising business continued to grow at an extraordinary rate and problems such as an advertiser boycott of YouTube had little impact.
LOCAL MARKETS OUTLOOK (As reported by NewsRise) • The SGX Nifty Futures were trading at 9,362.00, trading little changed from its previous close.
• The Indian rupee is likely to edge higher against the dollar in early trade amid bets that local shares will track overnight gains in Wall Street, spurring foreign fund inflows.
• Indian government bonds may trade largely unchanged ahead of a weekly supply of notes today, even as lower U.S. yields may trigger some buying. The yield on the benchmark 6.97 pct bond maturing in 2026 is likely to trade in a 6.92 pct - 6.97 pct band today.
GLOBAL MARKETS • The Nasdaq Composite ended at a record high on Thursday, boosted by results-related gains in Comcast, PayPal and Intuit, while the S&P 500 and the Dow were little changed.
• Asian stocks inched higher and looked set to close a strong week on a positive note, while the euro slipped after the European Central Bank showed no signs of paring its stimulus programme.
• The dollar edged up in Asian trading but was on track for a losing month against a basket of currencies, while the euro shed some of its monthly gains after the European Central Bank maintained its easing bias.
• U.S. Treasury prices rose on Thursday, as investors sought the safety of bonds in the face of doubts about President Donald Trump's unimpressive tax plan and persistent geopolitical tensions in North Korea and Syria.
• Oil prices rose but were still on track for a second straight weekly loss on concerns that an OPEC-led production cut has failed to significantly tighten an oversupplied market.
• Gold was little changed but poised for the biggest weekly fall in seven weeks as investors sought out riskier assets, dampening demand for gold, which pays no interest.
CLOSE FII INVESTMENTS EQUITIES DEBT PNDF spot 64.13/64.16 April 27 -$28.39 mln $60.17 mln 10-yr bond yield 7.19 Month-to-date -$167.82 mln $3.97 bln Year-to-date $6.61 bln $9.44 bln For additional data: India govt bond market volumes Stock market reports Non-deliverable forwards data Corporate debt stories [IN CORPD] Local market closing/intraday levels [IN SNAPSHOT] Monthly inflows [INFLOWS RTRS TABLE IN] ($1 = 64.15 Indian rupees) (Compiled by Sai Sharanya Khosla in Bengaluru)
