Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams - 21 May, 2015

Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams

India’s largest public sector bank State Bank of India has recently inked a Memorandum of Understanding with e-commerce giant Amazon to develop payment and commerce solutions for customer and small business.
As per the MoU, the SBI, will also provide loans to SME customers who supply products to Amazon to help them increase their operations.
SBI is also looking to tap Amazon’s expertise and talent in order to connect potential buyers and sellers, along with efficient ways of sourcing raw materials for existing customers. SBI is also seeking to ink similar agreement with other e-commerce players such as Snapdeal and Paypal for similar payments and commerce solutions.

Simplifying norms for domestic funds to manage offshore pooled assets, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has dropped ‘20-25 rule’, which required a minimum of 20 investors and a cap of 25 per cent on investment by an individual, for funds from low-risk foreign investors.
As per the existing norms, a fund manager who is managing a domestic scheme, is allowed to manage an offshore fund, subject to three specific conditions.
The first requires the investment objective and asset allocation of the domestic scheme and of the offshore fund to be the same.
The second condition requires at least 70 per cent of the portfolio to be replicated across both the domestic scheme and the offshore fund.
The third condition, which was being considered as the most stringent by the industry, requires that the offshore fund should be broad-based with at least 20 investors with no single investor holding more than 25 per cent of the fund corpus.
In a notification uploaded on SEBI’s website, the regulator said these restrictions would not apply “if the funds managed are of Category I foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) and/or Category II foreign portfolio investors which are appropriately regulated broad based funds.”

Innovative Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai is tonight announced as the winner of the sixth Man Booker International Prize at an award ceremony at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Krasznahorkai was chosen from a list of ten eminent contenders from around the world.
The Man Booker International Prize, worth £60,000, is awarded for an achievement in fiction on the world stage. It is presented once every two years to a living author for a body of work published either originally in English or available in translation in the English language.

President Pranab Mukherjee inaugurated the 50th Anniversary of India’s first historic climb of Mt. Everest in 1965 at a function held at Rashtrapati Bhavan. This function was organized by the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF) to celebrate the historic climb of Mt. Everest in 1965 by an Indian team led by Captain Mohan Singh Kohli.
On this day in 1965, Indian team of 21 mountaineers led by Captain M S Kohli of Indian Navy had successfully climbed world’s highest peak Mt. Everest (8848 m) after a series of three unsuccessful attempts in five years. The function was attended by nine surviving members of the 1965 expedition including Capt MS Kohli, Maj. H.P.S. Ahluwalia, Col Narinder Kumar, Sonam Wangyal, C P Vohra, G S Bhangu, Brigadier Mulk Raj, Dr Lala Telang and Gurdial Singh.
It should be noted that during 1965 expedition Nawang Gombu, the Sherpa who was the member of the team at that time had created record by climbing to the summit twice. For first time he had climbed to the peak in 1963 with an American expedition team.

Defence Research and Development Organisation on 20th May has successfully launched indigenously developed beyond visual range air-to-air missile, Astra from Su-30 MKI fighter jet in two developmental trials conducted at the Integrated Test Range, Chandipur, Odisha.
In the first trial, the supersonic missile was released when the fighter jet was performing a “very high-g manoeuvre.” In the second trial, the g manoeuvre was higher than in the first exercise.
With this test, seven developmental trials were conducted and the missile is expected to be inducted by 2016 after a few more tests. The 3.8-metre tall Astra is a radar homing missile and one of the smallest weapon systems developed by the DRDO.

The Union Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley, had announced the constitution of a Committee headed by Justice A.P. Shah to look into the issue of Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) on Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) as well as other issues which are referred to it .
Committee will examine the matter relating to levy of MAT on FIIs for the period prior to 01.04.2015.The Committee will also examine all the related legal provisions, judicial / quasi judicial pronouncements and such other relevant aspects as it may consider appropriate. The Committee has been requested to give its recommendations on the above issue expeditiously.
As initially the Committee would focus on the issue of MAT on FIIs for giving its report expeditiously, other issues to be referred to the Committee will be notified in due course. The Committee may interact with various stakeholders as it may deem fit. The Committee may also invite officers from Department of Revenue including CBDT for consultations/discussions as may be necessary.
The Committee shall set its own procedure for regulating its work. The term of the Committee will be for one year or such period as may be notified by the Government from time to time.