HCL Tech's Chairperson Roshni Nadar Malhotra is India's richest woman with a net worth of ₹54,850 crore, according to 'Kotak Wealth Hurun - Leading Wealthy Women' list. Biocon Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is India's second-richest woman with ₹36,600 crore wealth, followed by USV Chairperson Leena Gandhi Tewari with ₹21,340 crore wealth. Divi's Laboratories' Nilima Motaparti came in fourth.

AstraZeneca and Oxford University have given conflicting versions of how they came upon the regimen of half a dose followed by a full dose for their COVID-19 vaccine. The half-dose pattern was found to be 90% effective. While AstraZeneca said the half-dose was given inadvertently to some participants, an Oxford scientist said the shot was given deliberately after thorough consultations.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has said it's not clear whether people who have taken the company's coronavirus vaccine will still be able to spread the virus to other people. "This is something that needs to be examined," he added. Pfizer and BioNTech announced last month that their vaccine was 95% effective at preventing coronavirus.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also founded aerospace company Blue Origin, has shared a video of testing of BE-7 rocket engine. "This is the engine that will take the first woman to the surface of the Moon," he wrote on Instagram. The video shared by him shows colourful flames coming out of the engine during the test.

The UN Covid-19 summit skipped up a pre-recorded video message from Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the world's largest vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India. "Unfortunately, the video couldn't be provided in time in the required format," General Assembly spokesman Brenden Varma said. Poonawalla earlier said his address would highlight India's role and contribution in fighting the pandemic.

Equity benchmark Sensex hit 45,000 for the first time during intraday trading on Friday after the Reserve Bank of India upgraded India's GDP forecast for 2020-21. The RBI expects GDP to contract 7.5% this fiscal from its earlier projection of 9.5% contraction. The Sensex was trading up 390 points at 11.10 am.

The RBI's Monetary Policy Committee on Friday decided to keep the repo rate unchanged at 4%, the lowest on record. It has so far slashed the policy rate by 115 basis points this year. The status quo also comes as retail inflation remained above RBI's target range of 2-6% for the seventh straight month in October at 7.61%.

A group of UK MPs said £50 billion (nearly ₹5 lakh crore) in cash was missing as it asked the Bank of England (BoE) to investigate where it's "stashed". It's "stashed somewhere but BoE doesn't know where, who by or what for — and doesn't seem very curious", Chair of the Public Accounts Committee said criticising UK's central bank.

The RBI has ordered India's largest private lender HDFC Bank to temporarily halt all digital launches and sourcing of new credit card customers. The order came in view of the outages of HDFC's internet banking services over the past two years, including the recent outage on November 21. The RBI asked the bank to examine the lapses and fix accountability.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has seized fugitive billionaire Vijay Mallya's asset in France worth €1.6 million (over ₹14.3 crore). "A property of Vijay Mallya located at 32 Avenue FOCH, France has been seized by the French Authority. Investigations revealed that a large amount was remitted abroad from the bank account of Kingfisher Airlines Ltd," the ED said.

HDFC Bank CEO Sashidhar Jagdishan has apologised to customers for outages and assured that the lender was working on a "war footing" to strengthen its digital capabilities. The RBI temporarily stopped HDFC from adding new credit card customers or launching digital businesses. Jagdishan admitted to three outages — in November 2018, December 2019 and the latest one in November 2020.

SBI's mobile banking app YONO suffered a system outage on Thursday, following which the bank issued an official statement on Twitter. "Steps are being taken for the restoration of uninterrupted service," it said, asking users to switch to OnlineSBI or YONO Lite for their needs. Earlier today, RBI temporarily halted HDFC from issuing new credit cards citing repeated system outages.

Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy expects office buildings to evolve into 'hot offices', in the post-pandemic world, where employees can decide which day to come in and reserve a desk. In an interview with CNBC, he said that most people would adopt a hybrid model of work instead of working from office 100% of the time.

Flipkart Co-founder Binny Bansal will join PhonePe's new board along with PhonePe Co-founders Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari. The board will also include two representatives from Walmart. Earlier today, Flipkart announced a partial spin-off of PhonePe, in a move that'll allow the digital payments platform to have access to dedicated long-term capital over the next three to four years.

SEBI has asked Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) to clarify on the NOC issued to the Future Group for amalgamating some of its subsidiaries, which was a key criterion in its deal with Reliance Retail. SEBI has pointed out four unresolved complaints registered against Kishore Biyani-led Future on its grievances platform and has sought clarification on them from BSE, Mint reported.

All the states except Jharkhand and three UTs with a Legislative Assembly (Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Puducherry) have accepted Centre's Option-1 to meet the revenue shortfall arising out of GST implementation. Chhattisgarh on Thursday became the last state to accept Centre's formula on compensation settlement. Centre has borrowed ₹30,000 crore on behalf of the states in five instalments.

Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said India would like to diversify its oil imports and resume supplies from Iran and Venezuela, after US President-elect Joe Biden comes into power. India was a key buyer of Iranian and Venezuelan oil before President Trump imposed sanctions on the two countries, which have blocked up to 3% of the world's supply.

NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar on Wednesday said the Indian economy is exiting negative GDP growth and will turn positive in the fourth quarter of this fiscal. "In the third quarter, we will achieve the same level of economic activity as the year-ago period," he added. He remarked the economy will sustain high growth trajectory in the coming years.

Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan confirmed that three preliminary bids have been received to buy the government's 52.98% controlling stake in India's second-largest fuel retailer, Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL). Mining company Vedanta had confirmed its bid on November 18, while the other two bidders are reportedly global funds, one of them being Apollo Global Management.

S&P Global has forecast that global debt is set to reach $200 trillion or 265% of world's annual economic output by end of 2020. However, the credit rating agency said, "The projected 14% surge in global debt-to-GDP in 2020 is unlikely to cause a near-term debt crisis." The debt has been amplified by economic plunge caused by COVID-19, it added.

The RBI has hiked the limit for contactless card transactions and e-mandates for recurring transactions through cards and UPI from ₹2,000 to ₹5,000. The new limit, which will be effective from January 1, will be at discretion of the user. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said the aim was to expand adoption of digital payments in a safe and secure manner.

The ₹810 crore Burger King India initial public offer (IPO) was subscribed nearly 157 times on the final day of the bidding, as per data available on the exchanges. Non-institutional investors (NIIs) saw the highest subscription of 354.11 times. The portion meant for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) was subscribed 86.64 times and that for retail investors was subscribed 68.15 times.

India’s trade deficit in November fell 21.93%, from $12.75 billion a year ago to $9.96 billion, preliminary data released by the government showed. Merchandise imports contracted 13.33% in November to $33.39 billion from a year ago while exports fell 9.07% to $23.43 billion. Major export items that dragged down growth included petroleum products and engineering goods.

A special CBI court in Mumbai has rejected the bail plea of Vipul Chitalia, Vice President of Gitanjali Group, who was arrested in the Punjab National Bank scam. Chitalia had filed a bail application for the second time. CBI had alleged that Chitalia was the "mastermind" for putting through fraudulent transactions along with absconding accused, Gitanjali Group's owner, Mehul Choksi.

The initial public offering (IPO) of Burger King India got fully subscribed within hours and oversubscribed by 3.13 times by the end of day's bidding. The IPO received bids for 233.20 million shares against 74.49 million shares on offer. With a share price band of ₹59-60, the three-day stake sale ends on December 4.