After CAA, Centre might bring population control law: Niranjan Jyoti

New Delhi, Jun 18: Reliance Industries Ltd on Thursday said it has sold a 2.32 per cent stake in its digital unit to Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) for Rs 11,367 crore, taking the cumulative fund raising to about Rs 1.16 lakh crore in two months.

Starting with Facebook Inc on April 22, Reliance has sold almost 25 per cent of equity in Jio Platforms - the maximum reports suggest the company intends to dilute to financial investors.

The investment by Saudi sovereign wealth fund is "at an equity value of Rs 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of Rs 5.16 lakh crore", the company said in a statement.

With this investment, Jio Platforms has raised Rs 115,693.95 crore from some of the leading global investment powerhouses at a time when the world is deeply impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in a recession kind of environment for the global economy.

"With the addition of PIF's investment, Jio Platforms has established partnerships with a marquee set of global financial investors, who will contribute to establishing the Digital Society vision for India," the statement said.

Jio Platforms houses India's biggest telecom firm by subscribers, Reliance Jio. With more than 388 million users, Jio has forced out several rivals and driven consolidation in the sector since entering the market in 2016 with free voice services and cut-price data.

Over the past two months, billionaire Mukesh Ambani's oil-to-telecom conglomerate has announced the sale of about $14 billion of assets, completed a Rs 53,124 crore rights issue and slowed the run rate of new investment by a quarter.

These will help Reliance meet its target of paying off Rs 1.61 lakh crore of net debt by the end of the year.
This is PIF's largest investment into the Indian economy to date.

Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, said, "We at Reliance have enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for many decades. From oil economy, this relationship is now moving to strengthen India's New oil (data-driven) economy, as is evident from PIF's investment into Jio Platforms."

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of PIF, commented: "We are delighted to be investing in an innovative business which is at the forefront of the transformation of the technology sector in India. We believe that the potential of the Indian digital economy is very exciting and that Jio Platforms provides us with an excellent opportunity to gain access to that growth."

"This investment will also enable us to generate significant long-term commercial returns for the benefit of Saudi Arabia's economy and our country's citizens, in line with our mandate to safeguard and grow the national wealth of the Kingdom," he said.

The transaction is subject to Indian regulatory and other customary approvals.

Morgan Stanley acted as financial advisor to Reliance Industries and AZB & Partners and Davis Polk & Wardwell acted as legal counsels.

Prior to this deal, Reliance had sold 22.38 per cent of Jio Platforms to investors including Facebook Inc, securing Rs 104,326.95 crore in eight weeks.

Facebook kicked off the party, investing Rs 43,573.62 crore for a 9.99 per cent stake on April 22. This was closely followed by a further Rs 60,753.33 crore in investment.

Silver Lake - the world's largest tech investor - bought a 1.15 per cent stake in Jio Platforms for Rs 5,665.75 crore on May 4. It invested another Rs 4,546.80 crore for additional 0.93 per cent stake on June 5, taking its total holding to 2.08 per cent
Private equity KKR and Vista Equity Partners have taken 2.32 per cent stake each for Rs 11,367 crore apiece. KKR invested in Jio Platforms on May 22 while Vista invested on May 8.

Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co picked up 1.85 per cent in Jio Platforms for Rs 9,093.60 crore on June 5. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority on June 7 invested Rs 5,683.50 crore for a 1.16 per cent stake in Jio Platforms.

On May 17, global equity firm General Atlantic picked up 1.34 per cent stake in Jio Platforms for Rs 6,598.38 crore.

Global investment firm TPG on June 13 picked up 0.93 per cent for Rs 4,546.80 crore while L Catterton bought 0.39 per cent for Rs 1,894.50 crore.

Kolkata, Mar 9: A diabetic man died in the isolation ward of a hospital in West Bengal's Murshidabad on Sunday, a day after he was admitted there with suspected symptoms of coronavirus following his return from Saudi Arabia.

According to doctors, he was admitted to the hospital with fever, cough and cold.

Though test results of his blood and swab samples for novel coronavirus were awaited, it can be said that he died probably of diabetes, Director of Health Services Ajay Chakraborty told PTI.

"The man was highly diabetic and was on insulin. He returned home from Saudi Arabia and had no money to take insulin for the last three to four days.

"He was also suffering from fever, cough and cold. He was admitted to the isolation ward of the Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital yesterday and died today," the health services director said.

"We are waiting for the results of medical tests. The possibility of his death due to novel coronavirus infection is remote," he said.

However, precautions will be taken during the last rites of the victim according to the directives set by the central and state governments for patients who die of the virus, another senior official said.

"Family members will not be allowed to touch the body since the man had been suffering from cough and breathlessness. Those performing his last rites will be given protective gear, masks and gloves. Though test results are yet to be known, we do not want to take any chance," he said.

Meanwhile, the state health department has issued a directive to all private medical facilities to create a system for assessing all patients at admission allowing early recognition of possible COVID-19 infection and immediate isolation of patients with suspected novel coronavirus infection in an area separate from other patients.

New Delhi, Fevb 10: Of the countries most at risk of importing coronavirus cases, India ranks 17th, researchers have found on the basis of a mathematical model for the expected global spread of the virus that originated in China's Wuhan area in December 2019.

So far, India has reported three coronavirus positive cases -- all from Kerala.

Among the airports in India, the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi is most at risk, followed by airports in Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kochi, according to the model.

The new model for predicting global novel coronavirus cases has been developed by researchers from Humboldt University and Robert Koch Institute in Germany.

"The spread of the virus on an international scale is dominated by air travel," said the study.

"Wuhan, the seventh largest city in China with 11 million residents, was the relevant major domestic air transportation hub with many connecting international flights before the city was effectively quarantined on January 23, 2020, and the Wuhan airport was closed. By then the virus had already spread to other Chinese provinces as well as other countries," it added.

The researchers said that it is possible to estimate how likely it is that the virus spreads to other areas by looking at air travel passenger numbers.

"The busier a flight route, the more probable it is that an infected passenger travels this route. Using these probabilistic concepts, we calculate the relative import risk to other airports. When calculating the import risk, we also take into account connecting flights and travel routes that involve multiple destinations," said the study.

The top 10 countries and regions at risk of importing coronavirus cases are: Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, USA, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Cambodia, according to the model.

While Thailand's national import risk is 2.1%, it is 0.2% for India, found the research.

The foundation of the model is the worldwide air transportation network (WAN) that connects approximately 4,000 airports with more than 25,000 direct connections.

The model accounts for both, the current distribution of confirmed cases in mainland China as well as airport closures that were implemented as a mitigation strategy.

This network theoretic model is based on the concept of effective distance and is an extension of a model introduced in the 2013 paper "The Hidden Geometry of Complex, Network-Driven Contagion Phenomena" published in the journal Science.

The current outbreak of the 2019-nCoV virus started in Wuhan city, Hubei province, China. While the first cases were reported as early as December 8, 2019, the outbreak gained global attention on December 31, 2019, when the World Health Organization was alerted to "several cases of pneumonia" by an unknown virus.

The new virus was soon identified as a novel coronavirus and named 2019-nCOV. It belongs to the family of viruses that include the common cold and viruses such as SARS and MERS. On January 20, 2020, it was confirmed that the coronavirus can be transmitted between humans, greatly increasing the risk of a global spread.

The death toll due to the novel coronavirus outbreak in China has increased to 811 on Sunday, surpassing that of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003.

Although about 20 countries have confirmed cases, China has accounted for about 99 per cent of those infected. The first foreign victims of the virus both died on Saturday in Wuhan.