CURRENT AFFAIRS FOR 22ND OCTOBER 2015

CORPORATE AFFAIRS, E-COMMERCE AND TECHNOLOGY

1. Samsung Electronics is likely to lay off almost 5% of its staff in India. It sacked some 90 employees last week and another 125-150 employees will be asked to leave after Diwali.
2. HDFC Bank has posted a 20% increase in its Net Profit for the quarter ended september at Rs 2,869 Crores.
3. American's Tower Corp will buy a 51% stake in India's Viom Networks in the largest inbound acquisition for Rs 7,635 Crores in cash besides taking on debt, valuing Viom at around Rs 21,000 Crores.
4. Online Fashion retailer Myntra aims to achieve $5 billion in gross merchandise sales volume by 2018-2020 from about $500 million in GMV now and wants to push more private labels.
5. Toyota Recalls 6.5 million vehicles worldwide over a power window glitch that presented a fire risk.
6. Sony launched two new premium range smartphones Xperia Z5 and Xperia Z5 Premium which are priced at Rs 52,990 and Rs 62,990 respectively to compete with Apple and Samsung who have recently launched new premium ranged smartphones in the market.
7. Schneider Electric India is planning to hire 40% women recruits across all levels in an attempt to achieve gender parity.
8. FMCG firm Marico has appointed Sanjay Mishra as the Compnay's Chief Operating Officer for India Sales and Bangladesh.
9. Mobile wallet company Mobikwik expects GMV to touch Rs 700-800 Crores over the next 12 months with half of it coming from offline channels.
10. Italian Car Maker Fiat Chrysler India has launched high performance variant of Punto and Avventura under its brand Abarth priced at Rs 9.95 Lakh.
11. Austrian Crystal Maker Swarovski will now be able to run fully owned stores in India and is planning to invest Rs 75 Crores to expand it store count in India.
12. Idea Cellular reported a 7% rise in consolidated net profit .
13. 100 million monthly active users of Google Photos, 5 months after service was launched.
14. Wipro Quarter 2 Profit up by 7%.
15. Jindal Steel Works Quarter 2 Profit Plunges 84% to Rs 117 Crores.
16. Real Estate Developer The Wadhwa Group has leased space to Navnit Motors for opening Italian luxury sports cars brand Ferrari's first showroom in Mumbai by the end of this month.
17. The Rajasthan Government has rejected the Cairn India's plea to renew the contract for profilic Rajasthan Block with the existing terms and conditions
18. Yahoo has signed a search advertising deal with Google Inc .
19. Bajaj Auto Net Profit rises 58% on higher export realisation with profit at Rs 933 Crores.
20. AkzoNobel India reported a 14.6% increase in its Net Profit at Rs 40.9 Crores.
21. Tata Coffee reported a 15% decline in its consolidated net profit at Rs 27.5 Crores.
22. Indiabulls Real Estate reported a two fold increase in consolidated net profit at Rs 75.01 Crores.
23. NIIT consolidated net profit has more than doubled to Rs 20.8 Crores for the september quarter.
24. BlueDart Express reported a 74% increase in its standalone net profit at Rs 53.7 Crores for the quarter ended September 30.
25. Cairn India reported a 70% decline in net profit at Rs 673 Crores.
26. Ranbaxy CEO Arun Sawhney will retire from the company that is now part of Sun Pharma on October 31.
27. Reliance Capital Asset Management will acquire Goldman Sachs Indian Mutual Fund Business for Rs 243 Crores.
28. Maruti Suzuki has hiked wages of temporary workers of its Gurgaon and Manesar Plants including those of Suzuki Powertrain by an average 10% a month.
29. Indus Towers, the world's largest telecom tower promoted Chief Operating Officer Bimal Dayal as CEO-designate with immediate effect.
30. Indiabulls Housing Finance Net Profit rises 24% in Quarter 2.
31. Hard Disk Driver Maker Western Digital would buy Memory Chip Maker SanDisk Corp for about $19 billion.
32. Private Companies announced new projects worth about Rs 2,25,000 Crores in the July-September period.

POLITICS, ECONOMY, CRIMES, SPORTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND NEWS AROUND THE WORLD

1. The Union defence Ministry has blocked the transaction of Lincoln House, the two-acre palace property at Breach Candy purchased by industrialist Cyrus Poonawalla from US government for Rs 750 Crores last month.
2. Pakistan may become 5th largest nuclear power by 2025.
3. Dengue cases see 11% drop in 1 week.
4. A UP court has slapped sedition charge on Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for criticizing NJAC verdict.
5. 36,000 tonnes of pulses seized from hoarders.
6. CM Manohar Lal Khattar  orders CBI probe into burning alive of dalit family in Faridabad by upper caste perpetrators which lefttwo toddlers dead.
7. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has slammed politics in the name of religion and said nobody should be discriminated against based on faith, caste or creed.
8. China signs $ 6 billion nuclear power deal with Britain.
9. Indian students 3rd in generating London's revenue.