Category: Excerpts

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Why has Mohnish Pabrai started investing in India?

(Q) Why change of heart on India ? 

Note : This question was in relation to Mohnish’s recent investments in India, which had avoided thus far.

(A)I had stayed away from India as most of the companies tend to be family owned and lots of them have governance issues and hence we didn’t prefer to invest in family controlled businesses.However, we found few opportunities this year, which fit our criteria. One of them is The South Indian Bank.

Why South Indian Bank –

  • Unlike west or U.S it’s hard to get a banking license in India

  • 60% of the country still don’t have a bank account

  • Growing middle class are embracing banking and opening bank accounts

  • It’s not a family owned business -from BitsBusiness

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Vishwavir Ahuja:Let’s do it

Disclosure:I am market making in the shares of RBL Bank

Bankers said sometimes, the opportunity to build a business from scratch encouraged them to leave cushy jobs at multinational corporations and take up assignments in relatively smaller banks.

In 2009, Vishwavir Ahuja joined Ratnakar Bank (now RBL Bank) as managing director and CEO, after spending about a decade as Bank of America’s India CEO. “It was really a question of what I could do next. It is a very important question for someone who is 49 years old and has been a chief executive for about 10 years. I had two choices—either move into a bigger role globally or build an institution that would have a meaningful impact on the Indian economy. The latter was far more attractive, as I had no interest in leaving India. Therefore, when the opportunity came, I said ‘let’s do it’,” Ahuja told Business Standard.

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Difference between money and wealth

Singer Rihanna earns tens of millions of dollars, but found herself “effectively bankrupt” in 2009. She sued her financial adviser for not doing his job. He offered a legendary response: “Was it really necessary to tell her that if you spend money on things you will end up with the things and not the money?”

The first iron rule of money is that wealth is the stuff you don’t see. It’s the cars not purchased, the clothes not bought, the jewelry forgone. Money buys things, but wealth — assets such as cash, stocks, bonds, in the bank, unspent — buys freedom and security. Pick which one you want wisely.-from Fool

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BSE eyes most advanced bourse slot

 

Hat Tip: Shivam Bose

Disclosure:I am market making in the shares of Bombay Stock Exchange

Having begun with a humble background of functioning under banyan trees, India’s leading bourse BSE is now eyeing a slot among the world’s most technologically advanced exchanges and is targeting ten-times faster trades on its platform within three years.

Already, the exchange has made significant changes in its technology and has attained a response time of 200 micro-seconds for trades executed on its platform, BSE CEO Ashish Chauhan said.

The aim is to bring the response time further down to 20 micro-seconds within the next three years, Chauhan told PTI in an interview here.

Today 200 micro-seconds of response time puts us in top 5-10 per cent of the exchanges of the world in terms of the ability to give he response time. It is not only about the speed but also about scalability that is the ability to take order, he said.

“Today we are able to handle 500,000 orders in a second at the response time of 200 micro seconds. If you are able to take large orders, your response time should not suffer,” he said, while adding that proper safeguards are also in place to guard against any risks attached with high-speed trading.

Chauhan said: “We have also implemented a framework that ensures that this is lowest cost, but highest in terms of technology. We have used open source software. We have utilised the technology prowess of India to ensure that we are able to get more from the same hardware.

“We also implemented in April 2014 the new technology we had acquired from Deutsche Boerse and in 5-6 months that it has been in practice our number of orders per day has gone up already three times. Earlier it was 12-15 crore orders on best of the days, and today we are recording 40-45 crore orders a day on a regular basis.”

–from DigitalFC

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Ruchir Sharma:What is driving Indian markets?

Also keep in mind that for the last few months I agree with you that Indian politics has played a dominant role in driving this market but there are many other factors at work which have driven the Indian market over time.

One very significant factor has obviously been the state of global risk appetite and of global liquidity and I think that here there is something more concerning in fact at this stage because I know that in India we have been very much lost to the domestic political scene.

Let us not forget that the Indian market over a period of time is still extremely linked to what happens globally, never before in the history of markets have markets been so high five years after recession ended. So, you have asset price inflation across the world and some of that asset price inflation has also helped India and Indian equities do well over the last five years. I agree that lot of the factors have been domestic but some of the asset price inflation has also played a role in lifting assets to a level which is somewhat disconnected from underlying economic reality. That is one big factor we have to keep in mind.-said Ruchir Sharma