Investors remain uncertain about the future course of interest rates and inflation and the negative sentiment is getting reflected in the market. RBI increased the interest rate on expected lines but gave hints that this might not be the last hike in this cycle. Meanwhile, investors concluded that Fed has toned down its hawkish outlook.
Airtel teams up with Vultr to deliver cloud solutions to enterprises
Telecom firm Bharti Airtel and Vultr, a privately-held cloud computing company, on Wednesday announced a strategic partnership to offer cloud solutions to enterprises in India.
As per the pact, Airtel will offer Vultr’s suite of cloud solutions to its enterprise customers, especially those in the digital space and help them gain global reach and cost-performance edge to build, test, and run demanding cloud workloads, a statement said.
The cloud solutions will be hosted in Airtel’s data centres across Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi-NCR, enabling businesses to scale their digital operations globally.
“Businesses of all sizes and across all industries can now leverage cutting-edge cloud technologies to accelerate digital innovation, optimise global cloud performance, and maximise return on global cloud spend,” the statement said, adding that they will also be able to avail simple and transparent pricing to avoid billing shocks. (PTI)
TotalEnergies puts hydrogen partnership with Adani on hold pending audit results
France’s TotalEnergies has put on hold a planned investment in Adani Group’s USD 50 billion hydrogen project pending results of an audit launched following allegations by a US short-seller, chief executive Patrick Pouyanné said on Wednesday.
While the partnership where the French oil giant was to take a 25 per cent stake in the hydrogen venture of the Adani group was announced in June last year, TotalEnergies has not yet signed a contract, he said at an earnings call. (Read More)
IT cos to axe 2,500 new hires who flunked screening tests
Indian software service providers may let go of around 2,500 recent recruits for failing screening tests mere months after they were onboarded, even as some industry experts claimed the downsizing resulted from companies taking on more people than they needed during the pandemic.
“We expect around 2,500-plus freshers to be removed from these companies due to poor performance, post-training,” said Anshuman Das, chief executive and co-founder of Careernet, a talent solutions provider. The hit is larger this year as the number of campus hires has been lower than in the past two years of the covid-19 pandemic. (Read More)
Stocks fall on Wall Street on Wednesday, giving back some recent gains
Stocks fell on Wall Street Wednesday, giving back some of their recent gains as uncertainty about interest rates and inflation continues to reign.
Investors also reviewed another set of mixed earnings reports from big companies. The latest round of financial results and forecasts could help give Wall Street a clearer picture of how inflation is shaping consumer spending and business plans.
The S&P 500 fell 46.14 points, or 1.1%, to 4,117.86 and is now on track for weekly losses after a few days of choppy trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 207.68 points, or 0.6%, at 33,949.01. The Nasdaq composite fell 203.27 points, or 1.7%. to 11,910.52.
The pullback follows Tuesday’s gain of 1.3% for the S&P 500, which came after the first public comments by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell since the central bank raised interest rates last week. Markets found some solace in Powell’s signaling that Friday’s exceptionally strong jobs report wouldn’t by itself push the Fed to get more aggressive on interest rates.
But analysts pointed out that Powell’s comments were just as tough on inflation as before. He said that while he has seen improvements in inflation, the road ahead is still long to get it fully under control. The Fed can help drive down inflation by raising interest rates and keeping them high, but that also raises the risk of a deep recession and hurts investment prices in the meantime.
The Fed has been saying that it plans to hike interest rates a couple more times and then hold them at a high level at least through the end of the year. Wall Street moved its forecast for how high rates will go by the summer closer to the Fed’s following Friday’s blockbuster report showing much stronger job growth than expected, which could raise the pressure on inflation. But investors are still betting on the possibility of a cut to rates late this year. (AP)
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