With his experience at two of the largest Wall Street banks, David Martin Darst, a Managing Director of Morgan Stanley, is well placed to explain the crisis in the US financial markets (Darst was also with Goldman Sachs). One of his recent works, The little book that saves your assets, has been acclaimed as an encyclopedia on asset allocation strategies. On a recent visit to India, Darst met BT’s Rachna Monga.

Business Today discovered through one week of extensive reporting and research that investments worth over Rs 2.5 lakh crore are on hold because of the R&R (rehabilitation and resettlement) roadblock. At stake are not just some big-ticket investments, but also jobs and incomes of millions. This roadblock can deepen the impact of the slowdown that the economy has already slipped into.

As valuations take a beating, a number of companies, big and small, are being forced to tweak their fund-raising plans.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) relaxed pricing norms for qualified institutional placements, making it easier for corporates to raise money.

ICICI Prudential AMC has been raking it in. With assets of Rs 54,237 crore as on June 30, ICICI Prudential AMC is the second largest mutual fund in the country. The AMC is also an advisor to $2 billion worth of offshore funds of Prudential Plc.

In a wobbly stock market, look for companies that have delivered decent results this earnings season.

Our fifth annual survey of the companies who have managed to put a smile on their shareholders’ faces and delighted them the most.

Falling oil prices, coupled with expectations of a last-gasp burst of reform from a desperately cobbled-together coalition, offer a glimmer of a bear market on its last leg. But the by-now-familiar twin demons of rising inflation and interest rates cloud a promising picture. Virendra Verma reports.

When the stock market was booming, dozens of Indian companies issued foreign currency convertible bonds (FCCBs) to raise cheap capital. But with stock prices crashing and conversion coming up, they are in a soup.

The world's largest bank is gasping for breath. Will it now cut back operations globally to put its house back in order, or will it expand in India and China to offset its losses elsewhere?

KZen Equities, the Pune-based firm enables Indian investors to diversify their portfolio globally. The RBI regulations have permitted overseas equity investments for some time, but actual investments will take time to pick up due to a lack of India-based service providers in this area.

The boom in the mutual fund business has prompted many foreign institutions to set up joint ventures in India. Among them, Pioneer Investments, a global investment manager with a presence in 25 countries, tied up with Bank of Baroda’s mutual fund arm to form the Baroda Pioneer AMC.

Education is a goldmine not just for entrepreneurs but also for the country. With the education industry set to grow, the next wave of entrepreneurial activity is going to be education centric.

With investments of a little over Rs 44,000 crore in 2007-08—up from a meagre Rs 5,400 crore two years ago—the Life Insurance Corporation is easily the single-biggest shopper in Indian stocks. Rachna Monga tells us how the largest and the only public sector life insurance company has been re-inventing itself.

As inflation figures rage, marketers have a huge challenge on their hands—to keep the price-value equation just right for consumers. BT's Rachna Monga & A. Subramanian report.

The stock market’s massive fall has been swift, sharp and painful. Experts believe there’s going to be more pain before it settles down. Yet, predicting its bottom is like catching a falling knife.

Fortunes are made or lost on Dalal Street every day. So, who are the analysts fund managers swear by? BT presents its fifth annual survey of India’s Best Equity Analysts.

It's impossible to ignore Nikhil Gandhi and his grand game plan of sinking $20 billion into a clutch of big-ticket infrastructure projects. BT’s Virendra Verma deconstructs the man.

After being run by a string of bureaucrats who weren’t exactly in sync with the stock markets and its devices, regulator SEBI finally has a chief who’s no stranger to the bulls and bears. Can he make a difference?

Merrill’s new rating system has place for underperformers. The new rating system provides more transparency into analysts’ evaluation criteria, greater differentiation among the equity ratings within a cluster (for a buy or a sell).