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(Bloomberg) — Tata Group’s Bigbasket may list its shares within three years after the latest capital raising valued India’s largest online grocer at $3.2 billion.

The Bengaluru-based e-commerce firm, which is focusing on expanding its pan-India reach, may choose to launch an initial public offering in 24 to 36 months but was open to raising more private capital before that, Chief Financial Officer Vipul Parekh said in an interview Wednesday. 

The $200 million Bigbasket announced this week it had raised will bolster its quick commerce arm and expand its countrywide footprint as it looks to cement its dominance over the sector giants including Amazon.com Inc. and Reliance Industries Ltd.

Tata Digital Files With CCI to Acquire up to 64.3% of BigBasket

While deploying the fresh funds, there will be an “even split” between capital expansion and marketing in newer territories, according to Parekh. Bigbasket will increase the number of dark stores supplying BB Now — it’s quick commerce format which promises deliveries of household staples within 30 minutes — from about 200 to 300 outlets by March. 

Bigbasket currently operates in 55 cities and wants to expand to 75 cities in the same period, Parekh said. The firm also has a presence in about 450 towns and that could increase by 80 to 100 over the next year, he added. 

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(Bloomberg) — Richard Branson disrupted the UK’s aviation sector in the 80s with transatlantic flights, now his company will soar higher, paving the way for the first ever space mission from European soil early in the new year. The UK’s space regulator approval for Virgin Orbit will turn Cornwall’s Newquay Airport into Britain’s very own space hub. “Newquay we have a problem” doesn’t have the same ring, does it?

Here’s the key business news from London this morning:

In The City

UK Public Borrowing: Government borrowing surged in November as the public finances came under mounting pressure from rising debt-interest payments and the huge cost of subsidizing energy bills for consumers and businesses. 

• The budget deficit stood at £22 billion –- the highest monthly total in records stretching back to 1993 and almost triple the £8.1 billion reading a year ago, according to the Office for National Statistics

Virgin Orbit: The satellite launching company has received its final remaining licenses from the UK space regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, setting it up for its first launch.

• The first launch will take place at Spaceport Cornwall, which operates out of Cornwall Newquay Airport

Bunzl Plc: The consumer products distributer expects its adjusted earnings per share to be “moderately lower” than last year as a result of higher interest rates and an increased effective tax rate.

• The company expects group revenue in 2022 to increase by about 17% compared to last year, driven primarily by inflation and new acquisitions

In Westminster

Unions have made a final plea for Rishi Sunak to discuss higher pay settlements for NHS workers, as ambulance staff follow nurses by going on strike. Nurses said they’ll announce further strike dates for January by the end of this week unless talks take place over pay. Ministers have said they’re happy to discuss other factors affecting nurses’ morale, but not compensation.

Britain’s new “winter of discontent” doesn’t just mean inconvenience for businesses and households, the unrest will “further erode the country’s standing in the global economy,” according to Bloomberg Opinion. 

In Case You Missed It 

UK business confidence rose at the fastest rate in 20 months as labour market pressures showed signs of easing, the festive trading period exceeded expectations and businesses became more optimistic about the outlook for the economy. The findings mark a sharp contrast with other industry surveys and official statistics suggesting retail sales tumbled in recent weeks. 

Britain’s house prices may tumble as much as 10% next year, according to a survey of economists and property-market forecasters. 

Meanwhile, Atom Bank said its switch to a four-day working week would become permanent after a “transformative” year at the British lender, with a record number of new customers and fewer employees leaving. 

Looking Ahead 

Final UK GDP figures for the third quarter are due tomorrow morning. “Things will get worse before they get better in 2023 with GDP continuing to fall, taking the total peak-to-trough drop in GDP to about 1.5%,” say Bloomberg economists Dan Hanson and Ana Andrade. Both reckon that inflation has probably peaked, but stress the “journey to 2% will be a grind.” 

For a news fix when the day is done, sign up to The Readout with Allegra Stratton, to make sense of the day’s events.

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(Bloomberg) — Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc. has been granted a license to launch satellites from the UK, paving the way for the first ever space mission from European soil early in the new year.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority gave Virgin Orbit permission to operate from Spaceport Cornwall in southwest England after an official sign-off from Transport Secretary Mark Harper, according to a statement from the regulator on Wednesday.

Virgin’s re-purposed Boeing Co. 747 will take off from the former Royal Air Force base near Newquay carrying a rocket under its wing which will then blast away at high altitude to deploy satellites into orbit. The CAA, which took over UK space regulation after the country’s split from the European Union, issued a separate license to Spaceport Cornwall in November.

Britain aims to establish a network of space hubs able to undertake a variety of missions, including traditional vertical launches from two sites in Scotland, amid rapid growth in the planned deployment of communications satellites.

–With assistance from Charles Capel.

(Updates with more details from statement.)

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(Bloomberg) — Pro-Ukrainian hackers are gathering intelligence about Russian military personnel in order to help inform decision-making on the battlefield, according to Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation. 

Members of Ukraine’s so-called IT Army, a volunteer band of computer specialists, is assembling a “Book of Executioners” to catalog Russian soldiers who kill and allegedly torture Ukrainians, Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview with Bloomberg News from his office in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine. 

Officials in Kyiv have previously told Bloomberg they’re documenting suspected Russian hacking incidents as part of a plan to prosecute Russian leaders in an international court. 

The purpose, Fedorov said, is “so everyone can understand who entered Ukraine and killed Ukrainians.” 

“Modern technologies help us identify Russian war crimes, like facial recognition by artificial intelligence that decodes information from public cameras,” he said.  

That data also helps to make decisions on the battlefield, Fedorov said. He declined to say specifically how the hacking guides decision-making. 

The IT Army has claimed credit for disrupting Russian services with cyberattacks since the beginning of the war.

In one case, a group of volunteers from the IT Army “completely” hacked RuTube, a Russian video platform owned by a company affiliated with the country’s gas export monopoly, disrupting the site for a week, Fedorov said. The malicious activity was timed to coincide with Victory Day, said the minister. The Russian national holiday marks the country’s victory over Germany in World War II. 

The RuTube site was inoperable for three days, according to media reports at the time. 

“IT Army even managed to hack RuTube’s employees badges so they could not get inside the company,” Fedorov said.   

Gazprom-Media Holding, the subsidiary of Gazprombank that owns RuTube, didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

The IT Army is also working to deliver news about the war to citizens in Russia, where state-controlled news outlets continue to describe the invasion as a “special forces operation,” according to the minister. 

“For Ukraine it is very important to deliver the truth to Russians, to fight propaganda,” Fedorov said. “We need to undermine support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and those who back the war.”

Fedorov’s remarks came after suspected Russian state-sponsored hackers conducted a series of cyberattacks against Ukrainian infrastructure prior to the Feb. 24 ground invasion. The incidents were aimed at paralyzing banks and government websites and likely took between six months and a year to prepare, Fedorov said. As part of an effort to minimize fallout from the attack, the Ukrainian government shut down websites and diia.gov.ua, an app that citizens use to store passports, driver’s licenses and tax payments.

By that time, Ukrainian officials had spent months preparing for such activity, Fedorov said. Allies had warned Kyiv about digital threats to energy infrastructure, helping the government probe for areas of vulnerability that Ukrainians could patch before Russian hackers took action, he said. 

“We set up a red team last autumn and from November started to scan ourselves and attack ourselves and started to introduce new rules for cybersecurity,” he added. 

That work remains ongoing. Russian hackers targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure, activity that coincided with missile attacks that have sought to cause blackouts in the country, according to Fedorov. 

“They were trying to enter the grid,” he said, declining to provide details for security reasons. 

“Russians are scanning our systems,” he said. “Anything could be ahead of us so we need to accumulate strength and experience. We are conducting audits all the time.”

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(Bloomberg) — Troubled Philippine telecoms giant PLDT Inc. finally halted a days-long stock rout as it vowed to cooperate with an investigation into the more than $800 million of unaccounted spending that it disclosed last week.

Shares of the country’s largest phone company by revenue climbed as much as 7.1% on Wednesday in Manila, helped also by comments from the head of the stock exchange that there was no fraudulent trading in PLDT shares before it disclosed the unrecorded spending.

It’s a welcome reprieve for the almost a century-old firm after shares tumbled 20% on Monday alone, a record drop. But questions remain about why the spending was undocumented, with investors expecting answers at a briefing taking place this afternoon.

While the company denies that there were any fraudulent activities, the issue raises concerns about its corporate governance practices and may make investors wary about the broader $228 billion Philippine stock market.

PLDT flagged 48 billion pesos ($867 million) in undocumented spending over four years from 2019 on Friday, describing it as a “budget overrun” and “elevated capex spend.” The Securities and Exchange Commission, the Philippine regulator, quickly said that it was starting an inquiry into the disclosure and the sharp decline in the share price before it.

Philippine Stock Exchange President Ramon Monzon said earlier Wednesday that there were no fraudulent activities in the trading of PLDT shares, according to ABS-CBN News. 

In its statement, PLDT also said that its disclosure last week wasn’t made sooner because it “needed time to conduct its investigation of the contracts and expenditures involved as well as to meet its major vendors for reconciliation of outstanding amounts and project status.” 

It added that its business and outlook continue to remain healthy. 

PLDT has a large base of foreign investors, but has the second-lowest percentage of independent directors among the 30 firms in the country’s benchmark index. 

At least two brokers have already weighed in to support the company, with Morgan Stanley saying much of the undocumented spending has already been priced in. Local firm COL Financial Group Inc. upgraded PLDT to buy from hold, saying the selloff appears to be overdone. 

(Updates throughout)

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(Bloomberg) — A former executive at troubled crypto lender BlockFi has taken a role at Alphabet Inc.’s Google to work on Web3.

Rishi Ramchandani, who was BlockFi’s vice president for Asia from June 2020 through this month, is stepping in as APAC Web3 Lead at Google, according to his LinkedIn profile as well as a post on the social-media site from Mitesh Agarwal, a managing director at Google focusing on its cloud service customers, partner engineering and a Web3-related effort.

Google Cloud aims to enable the Web3 ecosystem — which encompasses companies looking to build new web uses and applications on blockchain technology — by supporting development, transactions, storage and deployment of new products, a spokesperson said via email last month. Its customers include top cryptocurrency and Web3-related outfits including Coinbase Global Inc., Dapper Labs Inc., Sky Mavis Inc., Nansen and Hedera, the spokesperson said.

BlockFi filed for bankruptcy last month after the rapid collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s empire including exchange FTX and trading shop Alameda Research. It sold about $239 million of crypto and warned almost 250 workers that they’d lose their jobs in the leadup to that event. A lawyer for BlockFi said it will try to collect about $680 million it is owed by a part of Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto universe.

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(Bloomberg) — Regulators in China are monitoring Hong Kong’s approach to build it into a leading Asian cryptocurrency hub and see it as a policy test for the mainland, according to Tron founder Justin Sun.

“Right now they are using Hong Kong as an experiment base so they can see all the feedback, all the results, once they adopt crypto,” Sun said in a Bloomberg TV interview from Singapore. “That’s why I’m super bullish and looking forward to seeing the results of all the Hong Kong crypto policy.” 

China’s maintained its strict crackdown on cryptocurrencies that’s outlawed raising of funds through initial coin offerings and banned exchanges. Hong Kong, meantime, has laid out plans to embrace digital assets by offering retail trading and exchange traded funds in an attempt to boost the city’s credentials as a leading Asian financial center. 

As the global industry reels from the collapse of FTX and a plunge this year in token prices, Hong Kong appears to be holding firm and has indicated that recent crises demonstrate the need for rule books offering guidance on compliance and investor protection.

“Hong Kong right now is in a very embrace crypto mode,” said Sun, the founder of Tron, a public blockchain. “I think not only this marks basically the opening up of crypto in Hong Kong but also opening up overall crypto policy in China.”

–With assistance from David Ingles and Rishaad Salamat.

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(Bloomberg) — Global smartphone sales won’t pick up until the year-end holiday season of 2023, battery supplier TDK Corp. warned, offering the most cautious outlook yet on the lackluster market hit by inflationary and geopolitical pressures.

Tokyo-based TDK, which provides batteries for the entire mobile industry including Apple Inc.’s iPhone, sees little indication of a rebound following major declines in handset sales, especially in the key market of China.

“I don’t hear any cheerful views from customers, and I expect the situation we face today will last until the middle of the next year, followed by a gradual recovery from late next year,” TDK President Noboru Saito said in an interview. He points to the releases of new devices in the second half of 2023 as the catalyst for a recovery in positive sentiment.

The smartphone market took a major hit from the global economic slowdown stemming from central banks raising interest rates, Covid-19 lockdowns in China and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Handset makers and suppliers started this year expecting to see sales grow, but have faced double-digit declines in their most important markets. Even Apple cut its phone production plans after seeing weaker-than-expected demand for its iPhone 14 devices.

Apple Trims New IPhone Output by 3 Million as Demand Cools

TDK previously projected 1.3 billion handset sales in the year ending in March, but it has now reduced that estimate by 10%, according to 56-year-old Saito, who took over as chief in April. He previously headed up the company’s sensor unit, turning it around from a loss-making venture to a profitable one.

The TDK view of how long a recovery would take is the most pessimistic among industry peers. Fellow Japanese component maker Taiyo Yuden Co. expects a rebound as early as the first quarter of 2023 while Kyoto-based Murata Manufacturing Co. is looking for an uptick in the second quarter. The three suppliers are part of the backbone of the mobile industry’s basic component supply, giving them a close view of future orders and demand.

Smartphone Demand Has Further to Fall, Key IPhone Supplier Warns

What Bloomberg Intelligence Says

Demand for Chinese smartphones remains sluggish, but demand for smaller high-capacity products used in iPhones could rise on recent model launches. Demand for iPhones could post a seasonal drop in November or December, so any upturn on Chinese smartphones could be significant for capacitor demand.

— Masahiro Wakasugi and Brian Moran, BI analysts

Click here for the full research

Cupertino, California-based Apple faces growing pressure to build production capacity outside of China, where its key iPhone Pro assembly complex at Zhengzhou was this year beset by coronavirus challenges and lockdown measures. TDK’s Saito sees no imminent exit on the horizon.

“Let me make it clear that China will remain one of the most important markets for us and TDK is committed to keep the supply capacity large enough to support huge demand there,” Saito said.

TDK makes 60% of its products in China and 50% of its sales are in the country, which is also the world’s biggest smartphone market. Those proportions won’t change drastically for years to come, Saito added.

“Decisions on where we make our goods largely depend on how our clients would act,” the TDK president said. “I don’t think our production capacity in China will decrease much, though I also don’t expect it to increase a lot either.”

China’s iPhone Factory Stumbles Give India a Chance to Swoop In

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(Bloomberg) — Philippine Stock Exchange President Ramon Monzon said there were no fraudulent activities in the trading of PLDT Inc. shares before the company disclosed its 48-billion peso ($870 million) cost overrun. Shares of the Philippines’ largest phone company by revenue jumped as much as 5% Wednesday after a record plunge earlier this week. 

Citing the results of the exchange’s preliminary investigation, Monzon told ABS-CBN News that “we did not see any indication of any fraudulent trades prior to the disclosure.” The bourse found that a lot of the transactions were institutional, not personal trades, and mostly carried out by foreign brokers, he said. 

The exchange is looking at transactions in PLDT shares from late October up to Dec. 16, Monzon said in the report, the day the stock fell sharply just before the company announced the unaccounted spending over four years.

The Philippines’ Securities and Exchange Commission is doing a parallel investigation on the the trading and the unaccounted spending.

Volumes in PLDT shares spiked 10 minutes before stock trading ended on Friday, with more than 100,000 shares changing hands, according to exchange data compiled by Bloomberg. The Philippine units of Macquarie, JPMorgan, UBS AG and Credit Suisse facilitated the unloading of most of the shares during that period, the data showed.

PLDT shares have lost more than 16% since Dec. 16 when it made the disclosure, recovering some lost ground after sliding by a record 19% on Monday.

The stock’s selloff already prices in the budget overrun, and proceeds from tower sale “can partially offset its impact,” according to Morgan Stanley analysts Mark Goodridge and Yvonne To, who kept PLDT’s overweight rating.

PLDT is set to hold a briefing for investors and analysts later Wednesday where officials are likely to explain in detail what led to the unaccounted spending, how it will impact the company’s bottomline and ease concerns over its corporate governance and fiscal controls.

(Updates with share price, exchange data, investor briefing.)

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(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk confirmed he will step down as chief executive officer of Twitter Inc. after finding a successor, though he plans to retain control over the company’s engineering teams.

Since taking over in October, Musk has overseen the firings or departures of roughly 5,000 of Twitter’s 7,500 employees. He’s said he plans to emphasize Twitter’s engineering as owner, and it’s hard to tell what’s left of other operations, such as legal and finance after the departures.

The billionaire executive embarked on a search for a new CEO, according to a person familiar with the search, after losing a straw poll he posted on the social media site that asked whether he should relinquish his role as head of the company.

Musk’s Twitter Legal Woes Widen With FTC Probe, Police Questions

More than 10 million votes, or 57.5%, were in favor of Musk stepping down, according to results that came in Monday morning. Musk committed to abide by the results when he launched the survey, but a day later he had tweeted more than a dozen times without directly addressing the outcome. The search for a new CEO could be drawn out and take time to yield results, said the person, who asked for anonymity discussing a private matter.

Musk has been almost single-handedly running Twitter since he bought it in October for $44 billion. He said early on that he didn’t plan to stay permanently as CEO and he has surrounded himself with a few trusted people, some of whom have suggested they’d be ready to take on what Musk calls a thankless task. “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted earlier this week. 

Among those who have remained in Musk’s inner circle are Jason Calacanis, an investor and podcaster, and former PayPal Holdings Inc. exec David Sacks. The two were part of Musk’s war room in the days after the deal closed and people familiar with the situation said they were given internal accounts and helped make decisions about who would keep their jobs. Both have been making public suggestions for Twitter’s business strategy. 

Calacanis kept his ideas for monetizing Twitter coming, advocating on Tuesday for features including a “poll analytics” link where information on Twitter poll results would be broken down by voter attribute, such as country and number of Twitter followers. Such insights are “well worth paying for,” he tweeted. On Monday, he talked up Twitter’s new business branding efforts.

Read about some of the potential candidates for Twitter CEO job

Sacks also retweeted a notification about Twitter Business on Monday, a new program that lets businesses identify their brands and key employees on Twitter. Sacks added the logo for Craft Ventures, the venture firm he runs, to the side of his name. In a reference to Musk’s poll about whether he should stay on as Twitter’s CEO, Sacks suggested that other CEOs run the same type of poll.

In one of his first tweets after the closing of the survey, Musk said Twitter will restrict voting on major policy decisions to paying Twitter Blue subscribers. The service, which costs $8 a month, had attracted about 140,000 subscribers as of Nov. 15, the New York Times has reported.

Calacanis didn’t respond to an emailed request about whether he and Musk had discussed the CEO role. A spokeswoman for Sacks declined to comment.

CNBC’s David Faber reported earlier on Musk’s search for a new CEO. Faber reported that Musk’s search has been ongoing and started before the Twitter poll emerged.

Musk’s dramatic stunt, asking the public about his leadership capabilities, came shortly after he attended the World Cup final match in Qatar, triggering a wave of trending topics such as “VOTE YES” and “CEO of Twitter.” 

Musk has warned that Twitter is at risk of bankruptcy and instituted a “hardcore” work environment for the remaining workers after a drastic cutback in staff. In his less than two months at the helm, he has spooked advertisers, alienated Twitter’s most ardent creators and turned the service from a reflection of the news of the day into the main topic.

After losing the initial poll, Musk, who’s also CEO of Tesla Inc., retweeted promotional material for the car company and for Twitter’s Blue for Business service. He also responded to an article about rival Toyota Motor Corp.’s criticism of electric vehicles with a simple “Wow.”

The stock of Tesla, by far Musk’s most valuable holding, has plummeted since the Twitter acquisition and critics have argued he’s spending too much time on the social media company. The shares fell 8.1% at the close in New York.

–With assistance from Sarah McBride.

(Updates with additional context)

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