Shyam Maheshwari, chief Executive Officer, SSG Capital Management Limited discusses the risk and rewards associated with investing in stressful assets and how they create opportunities. Mr. Maheshwari has made significant contributions to SSG Capital, particularly in the Indian market, where he has helped us build a strong business, and importantly a deep team of senior investment professionals who are well positioned to carry on successful Indian business In a fireside chat, Shyam Maheshwari, Chief Executive Officer, SSG Capital Management Limited; Haseeb Malik, Senior Managing Director, Ward Partners Inc., discusses the risks and rewards associated with investing in stressful assets and how they create opportunities. Shyam Maheshwari tells about the recent developments around stressed assets resolution. They are a $4.5 billion platform today. India has happened to be a large part of our investments since 2009. The economy has a tailwind of growth, said Shyam Maheshwari. They have put in resources, talent pool and capital as well as processes. It’s a market you have to work hard for, he said. They have done 14 steel site visits in the last two years but they haven’t concluded a deal in India yet. It takes time but there’s nothing called wasted learning, he said. According to Shyam Maheshwari, foreign investors have to continuously work on the process of executing things and are ready to invest their capital in India. Mr. Shyam Maheshwari also said about the challenges they face in the country. Assets have to be fundamentally sound. Operating assets could have been mismanaged. Operating a completed asset is the first criterion. They thought about the steel cycle and realized that the government came up with the process which created a flow to steel prices in India. The same thing is happening in China too, said Shyam. Non-operating assets are shutting down. In that context, they had started looking at those assets and at that time the law (Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code) had not been enacted and there was no process of restructuring. According to Maheshwari, diligence is a learning process. As he said one has to be in the game to learn the game. They put the resources and people on the ground. They are paying to learn the game. The process is fine. It’s all about being there and contributing positively. “Expectations of our investors are similar to us. On the equity side, you just can’t make a quick buck and then leave. We have a long duration fund of eight-10 years. We need that kind of time to figure out our way. You have to create that process, discipline and risk-reward as an investor and it is not different from what a strategic investor would do”, said Shyam Maheshwari. According to Mr Shyam Maheshwari, Challenges are opportunities. Firstly, one has to be in the game. Their fund is a long duration fund with no leverage. The second aspect is that doing business is not easy. Things that he would like to change in IBC would be the bias for strategic investors over financial investors. It’s very clear how the committee of creditors think today. Asking Rs500 crore for an initial deposit is not possible. One has to think that time is valuable and money is valuable. And I think this would happen over some time. “We are cognizant that every asset is not for us. It’s difficult to assess the liabilities”, said Shyam Maheshwari. He is an optimistic because the process in front of his eyes has changed positively. The whole part of foreign portfolio investments (FPI) to invest in debt instruments is good. This has created a level playing field for foreign and domestic funds and much more is required to solve the problem of the mammoth size that face. Many things have ramifications when the company goes into debt. Salaries are not paid; the income tax department is after your life and this cannot be underestimated. The process is improving, creditor rights are recognized. The attitude is changing and this NCLT process is a level playing field in itself, concluded Shyam Maheshwari.
0 Comments
The US has yet to respond to the new proposal, which includes lifting sanctions imposed against an economic arm of the Revolutionary Guard Corps Tehran has dropped its condition that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) be dropped from Washington's list of terror groups in return for sanctions relief in order to conclude the stalled efforts to revive the nuclear deal, sources told Middle East Eye. The 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed between Iran and the United States during the administration of Barack Obama to limit Iran's nuclear programme in return for US sanctions relief. But in 2018, then-US President Donald Trump unilaterally exited the deal and reimposed the sanctions. After Joe Biden came to power last year, talks to revive the deal restarted, but have been stalled since March as Iran demanded the White House reverse Donald Trump's April 2019 decision to designate the IRGC as a foreign terror organisation (FTO). The US administration has so far rejected this Iranian demand, describing it as "beyond" the deal. Now, the IRGC listing is understood to be the final remaining impediment to a negotiated return to the deal, which many say is the only path towards keeping Iran away from obtaining an atomic bomb. While chances for the revival of the JCPOA seem to be slim, a source told Middle East Eye that Iran, in a new proposal, has dropped its IRGC demand, but has called for lifting of sanctions imposed by the US against Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters, an economic arm of the IRGC, and a few other entities. read more : https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iran-nuclear-concession-remove-irgc-terror-list-sanctions-relief U.S. Transportation Command hopes Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets could prevent the next Benghazi.
THE PENTAGON ENVISIONS a future in which Elon Musk’s rockets might someday deploy a “quick reaction force” to thwart a future Benghazi-style attack, according to documents obtained by The Intercept via Freedom of Information Act request. In October 2020, U.S. Transportation Command, or USTRANSCOM, the Pentagon office tasked with shuttling cargo to keep the American global military presence humming, announced that it was partnering with Musk’s SpaceX rocketry company to determine the feasibility of quickly blasting supplies into space and back to Earth rather than flying them through the air. The goal, according to a presentation by Army Gen. Stephen Lyons, would be to fly a “C-17 [cargo plane] equivalent anywhere on the globe in less than 60 minutes,” an incredible leap forward in military logistics previously confined to science fiction. A USTRANSCOM press release exclaimed that one day SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket could “quickly move critical logistics during time-sensitive contingencies” and “deliver humanitarian assistance.” While the Pentagon alluded to potentially shuttling unspecified “personnel” through these brief space jaunts, the emphasis of the announcement was squarely on moving freight. But USTRANSCOM has more imaginative uses in mind, according to internal documents obtained via FOIA. In a 2021 “Midterm Report” drafted as part of its partnership with SpaceX, USTRANSCOM outlined both potential uses and pitfalls for a fleet of militarized Starships. Although SpaceX is already functionally a defense contractor, launching American military satellites and bolstering Ukrainian communication links, the report provides three examples of potential future “DOD use cases for point to point space transportation.” The first, perhaps a nod to American anxieties about Chinese hegemony, notes that “space transportation provides an alternative method for logistics delivery” in the Pacific. The second imagines SpaceX rockets delivering an Air Force deployable air base system, “a collection of shelters, vehicles, construction equipment and other gear that can be prepositioned around the globe and moved to any place the USAF needs to stand-up air operations.” But the third imagined use case is more provocative and less prosaic than the first two, titled only “Embassy Support,” scenarios in which a “rapid theater direct delivery capability from the U.S. to an African bare base would prove extremely important in supporting the Department of State’s mission in Africa,” potentially including the use of a “quick reaction force,” a military term for a rapidly deployed armed unit, typically used in crisis conditions. The ability to merely “demonstrate” this use of a SpaceX Starship, the document notes, “could deter non-state actors from aggressive acts toward the United States.” Though the scenario is devoid of details, the notion of an African embassy under sudden attack from a “non-state actor” is reminiscent of the infamous 2012 Benghazi incident, when armed militants attacked an American diplomatic compound in Libya, spurring a quick reaction force later criticized as having arrived too late to help. As much as American generals may be dreaming of rocket-borne commandos fighting off North African insurgents, experts say this scenario is still squarely the stuff of sci-fi stories. Both Musk and the Pentagon have a long history of making stratospherically grand claims that dazzling and entirely implausible technologies, whether safe self-driving cars and hyperloop or rail guns and missile-swatting lasers, are just around the corner. As noted in another USTRANSCOM document obtained via FOIA request, all four Starship high-altitude tests resulted in the craft dramatically exploding, though a May 2021 test conducted after the document’s creation landed safely. “What are they going to do, stop the next Benghazi by sending people into space?” said William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute who focuses on the U.S. arms industry and defense budget. “It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.” Hartung questioned the extent to which a rocket-based quick reaction force would be meaningful even if it were possible. “If a mob’s attacking an embassy and they dial up their handy SpaceX spaceship, it’s still going to take a while to get there. … It’s almost like someone thinks it would be really neat to do stuff through space but haven’t thought through the practical ramifications.” Hartung also pointed to the Pentagon’s track record of space-based “fantasy weapons” like “Star Wars” missile defense, elaborate projects that soak up massive budgets but amount to nothing. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. In an email to The Intercept, USTRANSCOM spokesperson John Ross wrote that “interest in PTP deployment is explorative in nature and our quest for understanding what may be feasible is why we’ve entered into cooperative research and development agreements like the one you reference,” adding that “the speed of space transportation promises the potential to offer more options and greater decision space for leaders, and dilemmas for adversaries.” Asked when USTRANCOM believes a rocket-deployed quick reaction force might actually be feasible, Ross said the command is “excited for the future and believe it’s possible within the next 5-10 years.” “My two cents are that it’s unlikely that they would be able to evacuate anyone quickly via rocket,” said Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Aerospace Security Project. Johnson pointed out that even if the underlying technology were sound, the small question of where to land an enormous 165-foot Starship rocket, the world’s largest, remains. “If it’s in a city, it’s not like they can land [a] Starship next to the embassy.” In the hypothetical embassy rescue mission, “you still have logistics issues there about getting forces onto the launch vehicle and then again on where you could land the vehicle and how to get the forces from the landing site to the base/embassy,” Johnson added, “which has not been tested or proven and in my opinion is a bit sci-fi.” read more : https://theintercept.com/2022/06/19/spacex-pentagon-elon-musk-space-defense/ Senators in both parties briefed recently by senior Biden administration officials on negotiations with Iran say they doubt Tehran will agree to any new deal to limit its development of nuclear weapons.
Lawmakers say the administration has an offer on the table, but that Iran is showing little willingness to reestablish the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which placed significant restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Former President Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the 2015 deal, which was one of former President Obama’s biggest foreign policy accomplishments. Biden officials said in January that they were on the cusp of restoring the agreement but cautioned at the time that it would be up to Tehran to accept it. Four months later, Iran still hasn’t shown any serious interest in accepting the offer from the United States and its European allies, which means one of President Biden’s top foreign policy priorities remains in limbo. “I’m not optimistic there will be such a deal. The administration believes that strategically it makes sense to keep the offer on the table, but I don’t see the pathway forward. That’s my own view,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) told The Hill. Menendez said accepting a new accord is a divisive proposition within Iran’s political establishment, which is making it difficult to revive the agreement. “I think there’s conflict inside Iran, so there’s no clear pathway forward,” he said. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said, “You just don’t know what the Iranians are thinking.” “My guess is, at this stage, that it is unclear whether the Iranians want a deal or not. There’s some disagreements within Iran itself,” he said. “The U.S. has put forward a proposal. The ball is really in the Iranians’ court.” A senior Republican senator on the Foreign Relations panel who attended the administration’s briefing Wednesday on the talks said the prospects of a deal are “not encouraging.” And Sen. James Risch (Idaho), the senior Republican on Foreign Relations, said he didn’t know what was happening in the talks when they started but has now been brought up to date. “I do know where the negotiations stand and they should’ve been over. They promised us it was going to end in February if there wasn’t a deal,” he said, referring to what some senators thought was an assurance by administration officials not to let the talks drag on without buy-in from Iran. Several senators said there are signs that Iran doesn’t want to cooperate with Western allies by allowing oversight of its nuclear program. Iran earlier this month turned off two surveillance cameras used by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor one of its nuclear facilities. The United States, Britain, Germany and France submitted a draft resolution to the U.N. earlier this month criticizing Iran for not explaining why trace amounts of uranium were found at undeclared nuclear sites. One senator who requested anonymity to discuss the negotiations said Iran is making “an unreasonable demand” of the administration by asking it to waive the designation of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization as part of any new nuclear deal. “The odds of them getting a deal without relinquishing on that is tiny,” the lawmaker said of Iran’s demand. The Biden administration has so far refused the request. The senator also cited the shutoff of U.N. monitoring cameras as troublesome. “The administration has publicly said they’re still willing to negotiate to a JCPOA 2.0, but the actions taken by the Iranian regime make that harder and harder every day,” the lawmaker said. “I do not think a deal is imminent.” Some foreign policy experts think Iran is less desperate for sanctions relief than it was during the Obama administration because it’s collecting substantial revenue through oil exports. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said last month that his country’s oil exports have doubled since August. Iran’s central bank reported in February that it had made $18.6 billion in oil sales during the first half of the Persian year, even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent embargo of Russian oil exports sent prices soaring. Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute specializing in foreign policy and defense policy, said “the problem is the ball’s in Iran’s court.” She said the administration has “given up a ton” in concessions to get Iran to agree to a new plan but so far without success. “The Iranians haven’t shown any sign of shifting,” she said. “They’re exporting vast amounts of oil at this moment.” “Plus they’re doing illicit business with the Russians, and that’s earning them some money,” she added. “From their perspective, the geopolitical circumstances are going to be advantageous to Iran and to their entire notion of a resistance economy. They’re going to be part of this network with China and Russia that will be able to do business together.” The United States last month announced it would place sanctions on an oil smuggling network supported by senior Russian government officials and ones in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force. Read more : https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3528366-lawmakers-say-new-iran-nuclear-deal-unlikely/ More Americans say former President Trump should face criminal charges in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to a new poll.
The ABC News-Ipsos survey published on Sunday found that 58 percent of respondents said Trump should be criminally charged, while 40 percent of respondents said Trump should not face charges. Forty-six percent of respondents said that they believe Trump bears a great amount of responsibility for the Capitol attack, and 12 percent of those surveyed said that the former president bears a good amount of responsibility. Seventeen percent of respondents, by comparison, said Trump bears some amount of responsibility for what transpired on Jan 6., and 24 percent of those surveyed believe Trump bears no responsibility for the Capitol insurrection. A similar ABC News-Washington Post-ABC News poll published in early May found that 52 percent of those surveyed said Trump should be criminally charged for his role in the Jan 6 insurrection, while 42 percent disagreed. The new poll comes amid a slew of public hearings being held by the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, during which Trump supporters stormed the building in an effort to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election. The Capitol attack resulted in the deaths of five people. Sixty percent of those surveyed for the new poll said that the House select committee investigating the attack is conducting a fair and impartial investigation, while 38 percent of respondents said the panel isn’t conducting a fair investigation of the insurrection. Nine percent of respondents said in the poll that they have been following the committee hearings very closely, while 36 percent of those surveyed said they have not been following the televised hearings closely. The new ABC News-Ipsos poll was conducted from June 17 to June 18, with a total of 545 respondents. The margin of error was 4.5 percentage points. The Amravati Police on Saturday visited MLA Ravi Rana’s residence at Khar in Mumbai to serve him a bailable warrant issued by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court. Sources said the warrant was issued this week as the MLA had failed to respond to the notice issued to him by the Bombay High Court. The warrant calls upon Rana to be present before the court on Monday.
Meanwhile, eight police personnel, including a senior inspector of Mumbai Police, have been penalised and their increment suspended for three years following a departmental inquiry. According to police, the departmental inquiry was set up after these officials, who were posted at the Dharavi police station in 2018, detained a 17-year-old boy for questioning in a theft case. Also, The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday tweeted, “ED has arrested Appasaheb Ramachandra Deshmukh, treasurer of Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Education Society on 17.06.2022 in a case of money laundering.” This comes on top of more than 1,700 cancellations and another 8,800 delays in the US on Thursday, FlightAware said.
Just a day after airline executives met with US transportation officials on how to stem flight disruptions, a band of storms triggered thousands of cancellations and delays for beleaguered carriers. More than 6,000 flights were late or scrubbed altogether as of 4:25 p.m. ET Friday, according to tracking website FlightAware. That comes on top of more than 1,700 cancellations and another 8,800 delays in the US on Thursday, FlightAware said. A line of storms stretched from Mississippi to Virginia, gumming up flights at large hubs in Atlanta, Charlotte, Washington, D.C. and New York. At the same time, airline staffing woes as carriers rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic have made it more difficult to respond to bad weather, leaving carriers with fewer reserve crews. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had a conference call with airline chiefs on Thursday, reminding them of the need to do all they can to reduce impacts from delays, said a government official familiar with the discussion who asked not to be identified. The Federal Aviation Administration is trying to add air-traffic controllers at facilities that have seen the biggest traffic increases, such as its control center in Jacksonville, Florida. Most airports in Florida are reporting an increase in flights compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to FAA. “Like almost every industry across the economy, airlines are adapting to labor shortages, supply chain dynamics and other pandemic related challenges,” trade group Airlines for America wrote in a letter to US lawmakers dated June 10. Overall passenger totals remain about 12% below 2019, according to the Transportation Security Administration. Russian Ambassador to China Andrey Denisov used the Chinese adage "Shoot oneself in the foot" to denounce Western sanctions. He called on BRICS nations to reduce dependence on U.S.-dominated global payment system during an interview with CGTN.
Read More : https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-06-17/Russian-ambassador-uses-a-Chinese-adage-to-denounce-Western-sanctions-1aWtp9KStnG/index.html Former President Trump is still the dominant figure in the Republican Party but his stranglehold is loosening.
Trump-backed candidates have had a mixed record in GOP primaries so far this cycle, with high-profile losses in Georgia, Nebraska and a key South Carolina district undercutting many other wins. The work of the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 also places Trump’s role in the insurrection squarely in the spotlight. To be sure, Trump leads early 2024 polls by a wide margin. But there is no guarantee that the ever-unpredictable Trump will enter the race. And there is a growing consensus among Republican insiders that, if he does so, he will face a serious challenge. So, if the 2024 GOP nominee ends up being someone other than Trump, whom might it be? Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis DeSantis is Trump’s most serious rival at this early stage. The Florida governor has a multilayered appeal. Conservatives loved his pushback against mask and vaccine mandates during the pandemic. He has embraced the culture wars with vigor, including his advocacy of legislation that liberal critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The mere fact that DeSantis sparks such ire from left-leaning voters is almost certainly an asset in a GOP primary. More concretely, DeSantis is a prodigious fundraiser. He surpassed $100 million in his reelection war-chest this spring. Some figures close to Trump believe DeSantis could be scared off, and would be reluctant to enter a head-to-head race with the former president. Read More : https://thehill.com/homenews/3528242-seven-presidential-contenders-for-the-gop-in-2024/ TikTok announced Friday that it has moved its data on users located in the United States to Oracle’s cloud platform, an attempt to assuage concerns about Chinese government access to American data.
Backups of U.S. user data will be stored in TikTok’s own servers in Virginia and Singapore for the time being before ultimately being deleted in the switch to Oracle’s platform. “These are critical steps, but there is more we can do,” the platform said in a blog post. “We know we are among the most scrutinized platforms from a security standpoint, and we aim to remove any doubt about the security of US user data.” TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance is headquartered in Beijing, has maintained that American data has been siloed off from access by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But new reporting from BuzzFeed News based on dozens of internal meetings contradicts that position. Employees of ByteDance based in China have frequently accessed private data on U.S. users, the reporting found, giving credence to security concerns. read more : https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3528271-tiktok-moves-us-user-data-to-oracle-platform/ |
Morning EyewitnessRead latest news today, breaking news headlines, Top news. Discover national and international news on economy, politics, defence, sports, science, environment and more Archives
June 2023
|