Current Affairs on Finance

Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has banned 21 entities on 15 October 2016 in a case related to tax evasion and illegal gains through misuse of stock exchange mechanism. Earlier, SEBI had barred Dhyana Finstock and how many other entities, from the market for using the securities system to artificially bump up volume and price of the scrip to provide illegitimate gains to preferential allottees : 75 entities 

HDFC has raised another Rs 500 crore by issuing rupee-denominated for which bonds to overseas investors. This is the fourth issue of rupee-denominated bonds to overseas investors. The bonds will mature on January 9, 2020 : Masala bond

Which Indian bank has become the first Indian lender to complete a banking transaction using Blockchain technology. This remittance transaction has been completed in partnership with Emirates NBD, a lender from the West Asia : ICICI Bank

RBI panel in Second week of OCtober has has Moots Easing Branch Norms. What are those: 

• Bank branches providing min 4 hours of service for 5 days a week should be allowed to be treated as a full-service branch.
• Any other fixed point unit of the bank not complying with min working period should be considered a part-time banking outlet.
• It will be counted in for computing requirement of having 25% branches in rural areas.
• The acceptance of recommendations will reduce costs for a bank.
• RBI Internal Working Group (IWG) on Rationalisation of Branch Authorisation Policy has proposed easing bank branch norms.
• It was chaired by Lily Vadera.
• It has proposed to relax norms that a bank branch has to follow, like a building, number of employees etc to facilitate financial inclusion.
• Key Recommendations Bank branches include those manned by business correspondents.

Which Stock exchange has received board approval for an offer for sale (OFS) for its forthcoming initial public offering (IPO). Teh exchamge also plans to get listed in India as well as abroad thus will file draft IPO papers with market regulator Sebi for the domestic public issue by Jan 2017. The board had also advised the management to file for overseas listing by April 2017 : NSE