StockViz

Market roundup: Dow –0.17% to 13511. S&P +0.02% to 1472. Gold -0.20% to $1679.70. London  –0.22% . Germany +0.20%. France +0.30%. Nifty -0.90%.

Last month, DLF [stockquote]DLF[/stockquote] announced a deal to sell its stake in luxury hotel group Aman Resorts. Last year, it sold another hotel firm in Kolkata and also a large land parcel in Mumbai. And now in order to cut back on its debt, DLF is set to divest its wind energy business to Bharat Light and Power. (ET)

IMF’s Financial System Stability Assessment Update said it would be prudent for India to first put in place and gain sufficient experience in implementing a comprehensive framework for the purpose before considering the entry of conglomerates into banking. It’s a good idea to learn from the mistakes made by the west and not rush into giving away banking licenses. (MINT)

Production at U.S. factories climbed more than forecast in December and the cost of living was little changed, showing the economy gained momentum entering 2013 while inflation remained at bay. The 0.8% advance in Manufacturing output and unchanged consumer-price index were not enough to boost the markets after the gloomy growth projections made by World Bank on Tuesday. (Bloomberg)

Accrding to SEBI guidelines all listed firms (outside government control) need to have a minimum public shareholding of 25%, while state-controlled ones need to have at least 10% stake held by public. In order to achieve this, SEBI may soon enable preferential allotments and qualified institutional placements (QIPs) as legitimate routes in the list of alternatives. (MINT)

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Market roundup: Dow +0.20% to 13534. S&P +0.11% to 1472. Gold -0.09% to $1682.30 London–0.15%. Germany –0.69%. France –0.29%.

The World Bank forecast that global gross domestic product will inch up 2.4 per cent this year, from 2.3 per cent in 2012. In its last forecast in June, the bank projected global growth would reach 3.0 per cent in 2013. Will the new growth approximations have an impact on the roaring markets? (ET)

Axis Bank Ltd [stockquote]AXISBANK[/stockquote] did well in the December quarter, with its net interest income rising by 16.6% over the year-ago period. Some analysts had expected growth of 12-13%, primarily because of a high base effect. After IT its now time for our banks to shine. HDFCBANK and IDBI results expected by end of this week.  (MINT)

India’s antitrust body has sought more details on the acquisition of United Spirits Ltd (USL) by Diageo Plc to make sure that the merger doesn’t create a monopoly. [stockquote]USL[/stockquote] controls over half of India’s 250 million cases liquor market and owns brands such as McDowell’s No.1 and Bagpiper. Mr. Mallya will have to wait for a bit more to see the deal through. (MINT)

SEBI has proposed allowing gold exchange-traded funds to park up to 20% of their gold holdings with commercial banks against 100% maintained currently. The suggestion is in line with a similar proposal made by the RBI recently to put the gold corpus of ETFs to productive use and, thereby, curb India’s huge gold imports. Let’s wait to see how this impacts performance of various GOLD ETF’s like [[stockquote]GOLDBEES[/stockquote], [stockquote]KOTAKGOLD[/stockquote] etc. (ET)

How is Facebook’s new search tool (Graph search) going to fare with Google’s long standing search engine? Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a feature to help its users search for people and places within the social network, in the first major product launch event since company’s IPO in May last year. Will it be a decisive factor in the competition amongst the two? (MINT)

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