Modi's second state visit to UAE begins

New Delhi, May 31: India registered its highest single-day spike of COVID-19 cases on Sunday with 8,380 new infections reported in the last 24 hours, taking the country's tally to 1,82,143, while the death toll rose to 5,164, according to the Union Health Ministry.

The number of active COVID-19 cases stood to 89,995, while 86,983 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said.

"Thus, around 47.75 per cent patients have recovered so far," a senior health ministry official said.

The total confirmed cases include foreigners.

The death toll has gone up by 193 since Saturday morning, of which 99 were from Maharashtra, 27 from Gujarat, 18 from Delhi, nine each from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, seven from West Bengal, six each from Tamil Nadu and Telangana, five in Bihar, three from Uttar Pradesh, two from Punjab, and one each from Haryana and Kerala.

Mumbai, Mar 13:  Investor wealth worth nearly Rs 12 lakh crore was wiped out in less than 15 minutes of trading on the stock exchanges on Friday, with the two benchmarks, the BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty, crashing over 10 per cent.

The 30-share BSE Sensex plummeted 3,380.59 points, or 10.31 per cent, to 29,397.55. It hit an intra-day low of 29,388.97, falling up to 3,389.17 points.

Trading was halted for 45 minutes in the early session after the index hit its lower circuit limit.

The BSE and NSE benchmark indices, however, pared most losses with the Sensex trading 835.40 points, or 2.55 per cent, lower at 31,942.74, and the Nifty was down 253.25 points or 2.64 per cent at 9,336.90 at 10.40 am.

The mayhem on Dalal Street eroded investor wealth worth Rs 12,92,479.88 crore, taking the total m-cap to Rs 1,12,78,172.75 crore on the BSE at 1020 hours.

The m-cap of BSE-listed companies stood at Rs 1,25,70,652.63 crore at the end of trading on Thursday.

Traders said besides global selloff, incessant foreign fund outflows also weighed on investor sentiments.

On a net basis, foreign institutional investors sold equities worth Rs 3,475.29 crore on Thursday, data available with stock exchanges showed.

On the BSE, 1,279 scrips declined, while 193 advanced and 40 remained unchanged.

Volatility heightened in global markets as benchmarks world over went into panic mode, insinuating a freakish selloff.

Bourses in Shanghai dropped over 3.32 per cent, Hong Kong 5.61 per cent, Seoul 7.58 per cent and Tokyo cracked up to 7.97 per cent.

Wall Street lost 10 per cent in overnight trade.

More than 1,30,000 cases of the novel coronavirus have been recorded in 116 countries and territories, killing at least 4,900 people.

The number of coronavirus patients in India has risen to 74, as per the health ministry.

Jun 25: Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s $40 billion surge this week and the recent ascent of Pinduoduo Inc. have reshuffled the ranking of China's richest people.

The country's largest game developer has surpassed Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. as Asia's most-valuable company, with its shares rising above HK$500 in intraday trading Wednesday for the first time. Pinduoduo, a Groupon-like shopping app also known as PDD, has more than doubled this year.

The rallies have propelled the wealth of their founders, with an added twist: Tencent's Pony Ma, worth $50 billion, has surpassed Jack Ma's $48 billion fortune, becoming China's richest person. And Colin Huang of PDD, whose net worth stands at $43 billion, has squeezed real estate mogul Hui Ka Yan of China Evergrande Group out of the top three earlier this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the digitization of the workplace and changed consumers' habits, boosting shares of many internet companies. Now tech tycoons are dominating the ranks of China's richest people. They occupy four of the top five spots: Ding Lei of Tencent peer NetEase Inc. follows China Evergrande's Hui.

‘Perform Strongly'

Tencent has come a long way since hitting a low in 2018, when China froze the approval process for new games. Since then, the stock has almost doubled, and last month the tech giant reported a 26 per cent jump in first-quarter revenue.

“Tencent's online games segment will probably perform strongly through the Covid-19 pandemic, and most of its other businesses are relatively unscathed,” said Vey-Sern Ling, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.

That has been a boon for Pony Ma, 48, who owns a 7 per cent stake in the company and pocketed about $757 million from selling some 14.6 million of his Tencent shares this year, data complied by Bloomberg show.

The native of China's southern Guangdong province studied computer science at Shenzhen University and was a software developer at a supplier of telecom services and products before co-founding Tencent with four others in the late 1990s. At the time, the company focused on instant-messaging services.

It has been a long comeback for Pony Ma. He overtook real estate tycoon Wang Jianlin as China's second-richest person in 2013 and topped Baidu Inc.'s Robin Li as the wealthiest in early 2014. Later that year, Alibaba went public in the U.S., catapulting Jack Ma's fortune.

Bloomberg Intelligence's Ling notes, however, that Tencent's jump this year has lagged behind some internet peers, especially those in e-commerce, games and online entertainment. Just consider: Tencent shares have climbed 31 per cent in 2020, while PDD's American depositary receipts have more than doubled. Alibaba, meanwhile, has advanced just 6.9 per cent.