Yearender 2014 News

Corporate legal cases kept India Inc on its toes in 2014 as high stake matters on coal, telecom and mining came up in the Supreme Court which also sent Sahara Group chief Subrata Roy to jail.

From giants like Reliance Industries and DLF to little-known entities selling jatropha plants as money-multiplier investments, all faced the music in 2014 when an empowered Sebi took them to task for manipulating markets, defrauding investors or hiding market-sensitive information.

Some cars were launched in the backdrop of a lot of hype and anticipation while others were launched in reticence.

While output may fall for foodgrains and some other crops, there are also fears that prices of farm items could decline in 2015 on global cues and affect farmers' income.

From Amazons of the world to Chinese Alibabas to desi Flipkarts, everyone wants to have a pie of the burgeoning e-commerce market in India and consumers are not complaining with sweet sale deals coming their way.

After witnessing a sub-5 percent growth, 2014 saw improvement in economic activity with the growth bouncing back to 5.5 percent in April-September period.

After a sluggish 2014 marked with falling housing sales and high costs, developers are betting on lower borrowing costs and economic upturn for a turnaround in the real estate market in the new year.

It so happened in 2014 that inflation hit a perfect-zero for wholesale prices and the retail one also more than halved to 4.4 percent, still it was not good enough for the much-awaited cut in interest rates.

Revelers ringing in of the new year this week need to watch out for the next day`s hangover. And investors may experience a similar feeling early in 2015 after a two-year run that has propelled U.S. stocks up by nearly 50 percent.

In the new year, the Indian smartphones market is expected to further consolidate its position, before emerging as the world's second biggest market in 2016.

Taking a big leap from murmurs at 'chai-samosa parties', shareholders made their voice heard loud and clear in 2014 with support from regulators, as they were seen vetoing cushy deals of promoters and fat pay packages of top executives.

Lured by heavy online discounts and easy home delivery of almost any product at the click of a button, shopping for Indians would never be the same again after 2014.

It took almost six decades for India to get a new set of rules for the way companies are set up and regulated, but it took just a few months to again change them with an aim to make it easier to do business in the country.

It's been a year of bitter medicine for Indian pharma companies with fines worth millions of dollars imposed by various foreign regulators, even as they stitched together deals worth billions of dollars, including the high profile Sun-Ranbaxy merger.

Fighting all adversities and a tougher regulatory regime, mutual funds are headed for a cash-rich 2014 with an estimated addition of about Rs three lakh crore to its asset base to become a Rs 11-trillion market.

Sugar remained sweet for consumers this year but turned bitter for mill owners who faced huge losses estimated at over Rs 3,000 crore and struggled to make payments to cane farmers due to sluggish sales realisation.

For silver, the year has been even worse with a fall of about 20 percent in its price.

Riding high on the sentiments, the stock market is gearing up for its best performance in five years with a rally of over 6,000 points in the benchmark Sensex in 2014 -- which also saw the investors' wealth hitting Rs 100 trillion level for the first time in history.

They are called 'Fast Moving Consumer Goods' companies, but it has turned out to be a year of slow business for the FMCG sector, even as movements were quite visible in 2014 among those at the helm of affairs.

The passing-by year also witnessed an improved gender and age diversity in board rooms, partly due to new regulations, and nearly 500 publicly listed companies have recruited at least one woman director for the first time.