Judges to get fewer days off, TCS posts strong results, and more top news

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India's Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi has scrapped weekday leave for judges, except for emergencies. Seeking to reduce the backlog of court cases, Gogoi has also barred judges from taking leave travel concession during work days and asked them to plan family holidays in advance by coordinating with "brother judges and chief justice." The Supreme Court will take action against errant judges who break the holiday rule. India’s courts have a pile-up of over 3.3 crore cases and are hampered by a shortage of judges — the high courts operate 40% below capacity.

TCS registered its best quarter-on-quarter growth in more than four years. The bellwether of Indian IT posted a consolidated net profit of ?7,901 crore for July-September, up nearly 8% sequentially and 23% yoy. Revenue came in at ?36,854 crore, up 8% sequentially and 21% yoy, helped by the rupee declining 5.6% during the quarter. Madhu Babu, an analyst at Prabhudas Liladher, said the continued momentum in revenue growth was a positive, and this was largely on the back of “deals won over the last 6-8 months.” But the company expects challenges in the next two quarters on account of seasonality and macroeconomic headwinds.

Stock pickers are having a rough run. Equity indices surrendered all gains made in 2018 and entered negative territory after Wall Street’s worst decline in eight months, high oil prices and trade tensions sparked a global sell-off on Thursday. The benchmark BSE Sensex dropped more than 1,000 points before recovering partially to close 2.19% lower while the broader Nifty index fell by 2.16%. Investors lost ?4 lakh crore in wealth in the first five minutes of Thursday’s trading. Analysts warn of a further retreat and several brokerages have advised investors to book profits.

The Delhi High Court directed former Ranbaxy promoter Shivinder Singh to pay his share of a ?3,500 crore arbitral award to Daiichi Sankyo. The court also told Singh to “come up with a viable” repayment plan by October 30, after his lawyer offered to mediate with the Japanese pharma firm. In August, the court restrained the Singh brothers from operating their bank accounts in India and Singapore while it executed the arbitral award. Daiichi had accused the duo of hiding material information while selling Ranbaxy a decade ago.

India's legal, education and design industries are growing the fastest, albeit marginally, in terms of workforce. LinkedIn data shows the sectors made net additions of 2.93%, 2.31% and 2.16%, respectively, in the first half of 2018, followed by construction, manufacturing and travel. Hardware, consumer goods and finance were the laggards, in line with the weakness in services’ growth seen in Q1 GDP. Interestingly, techies are in vogue despite a slowdown in IT hiring- in the last few years: software engineers, app developers, data scientists and full-stack engineers accounted for nearly a sixth of all job postings, on the back of a digital transformation of legacy industries.

Idea of the Day: If you want to start your own business, be ready to pitch your idea to anyone and everyone, says Knowlly founder Andrèz Coco.

“You never know when you’ll meet your next investor, customer, or partner.”

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