Reliance fined for violating disclosure rules in 2020 Facebook deal

Mumbai: India’s market regulator has fined Reliance Industries and two of its compliance officers for violating fair disclosure norms during Facebook’s $5.7 billion investment in its digital unit in 2020.

In April 2020, Meta’s Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Reliance’s Jio Platforms, aiming to allow WhatsApp to offer payments services to millions of small businesses. The deal helped billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance slash its heavy debt load.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) said Reliance did not disclose the deal even after newspaper reports in March 2020 published price-sensitive details about the imminent investment that led to a spike in its shares.

Reliance did not respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours, the media reported.

“When the bits of (unpublished price-sensitive information) that then became selectively available the company abdicated its responsibility to verify and come clean on the unverified information that was floating around,” SEBI said in its order.

India’s foreign exchange reserves fall by $4.6 billion

Mumbai: India’s foreign exchange reserves for the week that ended on June 10, 2022, declined by $4.59 billion to $596.46 billion, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data showed.

The previous week that ended on June 3, 2022, the total foreign exchange reserves were at $601.05 billion.

The latest decline in the reserves was on account of a sizable fall in Foreign Currency Assets (FCA), which is a major component of the overall reserves.

The FCA declined by $4.53 billion to $532.24 billion during the week, the RBI data showed.

Gold reserves dipped marginally during the week, while the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) dropped by $23 million to $18.38 billion.

Further, the country’s reserve position with the IMF decreased by $40 million to $4.99 billion.

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