Wipro Ltd, India's third largest software services provider, on Thursday joined TCS Ltd and Infosys Ltd in reporting better-than-expected quarterly earnings.

Wipro announced that its net profit for the quarter through December 2012 jumped 18 per cent year-on-year, from 14.56 billion rupees to 17.16 billion rupees. The reported net profit figure is much better that analysts' average estimate of 16.45 billion rupees.

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Taking a decisive step towards the deregulation of diesel prices, the government on Thursday allowed oil companies to decide on price of the fuel and revise it from time to time.

After a go ahead from the Centre, oil companies yesterday hiked diesel prices by 45 paise per litre, in a move that with definitely hike the prices of all commodities as transportation will become costlier. The hike in diesel prices will take effect from Friday.

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Indian telecommunications giant Bharti Airtel Ltd has confirmed that its CEO (India & South Asia) Sanjay Kapoor has resigned from the company, after nearly one and a half decade of illustrious innings at the group.

Without citing a precise reason for the unexpected resignation of the chief, the company just said that he decided to step down in order to pursue his future aspirations outside of the company.

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Indian civil aviation regulator has confirmed that it is reviewing the safety situation of Boeing Co's Dreamliner aircrafts but declared that it has no plans to ground the aircraft.

Arun Mishra, Director General of Civil Aviation, said, "We are not having any problem with our Dreamliners. The problems we had earlier were fixed. We are reviewing the situation now ... we will have to talk to component companies."

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The government has deferred the implementation of the General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR) by two years to April 2016, giving a clear indication that the government is giving more importance to foreign capital inflows than concerns over black money.

The GAAR, which is a part of the Direct Taxes Code Bill introduced in parliament in August 2010, was to be implemented in April 2014.

But, the Parthasarthy Shome committee, formed by the Prime Minister in July last year, recommended that the controversial rules should be postponed, and the government on Monday accepted the recommendation.

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Stock in Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) gained around 5 per cent to Rs 1,400 on National Stock Exchange (NSE) in opening trades on Tuesday after the software giant reported better-than-expected results for the third quarter of the current fiscal.

TCS announced that its consolidated net profit jumped 1 per cent quarter-on-quarter to Rs 3,552 crore in the three months through December 2012. On year-on-year basis, consolidated net profit jumped by a whopping 23 per cent.

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The government has plans to fix a disinvestment target of more than Rs 40,000 crore for the next fiscal year (2013-14), a senior finance ministry official revealed.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official said that the government wanted to pocket a much higher amount from disinvestment in 2013-14, and Finance Minister P Chidambaram would announce a target of a minimum Rs
40,000 crore in his Budget proposals next month.

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Analysts expect the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to announce a cut of at least 25 basis points (bps) in the policy repo rate later this month if core inflation remains below 5 per cent.

The headline inflation figure is still high, mainly because of high food prices; but core inflation (non-food manufacturing) has been falling for the past few months. In November, core inflation was 4.5 per cent.

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Senior officials from civil aviation ministry as well as aviation regulator DGCA have questioned Vijay Mallya's claim of resuming the Kingfisher Airlines flights by summer.

They said the revival plan submitted by the airline management previous month was unsatisfactory because the plan remained silent on funding and clearing stakeholders' dues, including employees' salaries.

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The combination of lethargic activities in manufacturing, mining and capital goods sectors pulled India's industrial production down in November year-on-year, supporting the case for a cut in interest rate.

Stats published by the Central Statistics Office on Friday revealed that the index of industrial production slipped 0.1 per cent year-on-year in November 2012, against a revised growth of 8.3 per cent in October 2012. Just three of the past eight months have reported increase in industrial production.

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In a bid to reap profits from the fast-growing beauty products market in India, French cosmetics giant L'oreal has planned to make a huge invest of Rs 970 crore in the country.

L'oreal is bullish about the growth of Indian beauty products market, and is aiming to generate around Rs 7,000-crore revenue from it by 2020.

L'oreal Chairperson & CEO Jean-Paul Agon said, "We have set a target of achieving Rs 7,000 crore in sales by 2020 and we are taking steps in that direction. We have already planned an investment of Rs 970 crore here."

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Stock in Infosys gained more than 12 per cent to around Rs 2600 a share in the early Friday trading, after the Indian Information Technology giant surprised the investors by reporting better than expected third-quarter results.

Infosys announced an increase of 12 per cent in revenue for the October-December quarter year-on-year. The IT firm reported revenue of 104.24 billion rupees, against 93 billion in the corresponding period of the previous year.

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Indian Stocks were trading lower on Monday after a positive start for the trading session. BSE Sensex was down by 58 points at 19281 and NSE Nifty was trading at 5862, down by 18 points at 2.36 pm IST. European markets have opened marginally positive.

Among major gainers in today’s trading session were UltraTechCement, ACC, BHEL and Jaiprakash Associates. Among major losers were HDFC Bank, IDFC, HDFC and NTPC.

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