Facebook to Invest $5.7 Billion in Indian Telecom Reliance Jio to Reach Small Indian Stores

Parliament Resumes In-Person Sittings One Day a Week, With Virtual Sessions on Two Days

Canada’s Parliament has resumed regular sittings, though not the way the Conservatives would prefer. MPs will gather in person each Wednesday and hold virtual meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Liberal motion to meet in person only on Wednesdays passed by a 22-15 vote on April 20. The contrary Conservative proposal to meet in person all three days was voted down by the same margin. Despite this split along party lines, pandemic responses have been less polarized in Canada than the United States, says Laura Stephenson, political science professor at the University of Western Ontario. “All of the parties are on the same page at this point and time in terms of how important it is that we fight this pandemic—that it is real, is it overblown [or] is it…

BENGALURU—Facebook will buy a 10 percent stake in the digital business of India’s Reliance Industries for $5.7 billion, as the social media firm looks to leverage its highly popular WhatsApp chat service to offer digital payment services to small businesses in India.

The deal will help the Indian conglomerate cut debt that has piled up in its expensive push to secure top spot for its Jio Infocomm telecom business.

Facebook’s investment will make it the largest minority shareholder in Jio Platforms Ltd, Jio said in a statement on Wednesday, putting the enterprise value of the business at around $66 billion. Jio Platforms holds a host of Reliance’s digital assets including Jio Infocomm.

Facebook to Invest $5.7 Billion in Indian Telecom Reliance Jio to Reach Small Indian Stores

WhatsApp is trying to secure approval to roll out its digital payment service in India, which will see it compete in a crowded market with the likes of Google Pay and Paytm. The approval to expand beyond the beta launch hasn’t come through yet, a Facebook spokesman said.

The messaging service has 400 million users in India, its biggest market, reaching nearly 80 percent of smartphone users in the country. The deal will also help the social media giant leverage WhatsApp to partner with Reliance’s e-commerce marketplace JioMart, that connects small businesses to customers.

“(India) is in the middle of a major digital transformation and organizations like Jio have played a big part in getting hundreds of millions of Indian people and small businesses online,” Facebook founder CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post.

For Reliance, whose debt pile swelled to more than $40 billion as of September, the partnership will bring in much needed funds to make good on its promise to cut net debt to zero by March 2021.

Reliance Industries, controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, is also set to sell a fifth of its oil and chemical refining business to Saudi Aramco for roughly $15 billion, and a stake in its telecom tower assets to Canadian private equity firm Brookfield Asset Management for over $3 billon.

While Jio has become the country’s largest wireless operator within about three years of its launch, Mumbai-headquartered Reliance has also rapidly expanded its retail business, which now has over 10,000 stores selling groceries, consumer electronics and apparel.

Revenue at these two businesses together jumped more than 25 percent in the December quarter.

Last month, Financial Times reported that Facebook was in talks for a 10 percent stake in Jio but the talks were halted due to global travel bans amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Jio said Morgan Stanley was the financial adviser on the deal. AZB & Partners, and Davis Polk & Wardwell were counsels.

Reporting by Bhargav Acharya

Additional reporting by Subrat Patnaik and Katie Paul

This article is from the Internet:Facebook to Invest $5.7 Billion in Indian Telecom Reliance Jio to Reach Small Indian Stores

Last Ship Belonging to a Major Cruise Line Finally Reaches Port

A global scramble to bring cruise passengers home amid the CCP virus pandemic reached its endgame on Tuesday as the last ship at sea operated by a major company headed into the Italian port of Genoa to disembark its passengers. Prior to docking, Costa Deliziosa, which departed Venice on a round the world voyage on Jan. 5, was identified by Cruise Lines International Association as the only one of its vessels still carrying a significant number of passengers. The association, known as CLIA, is an umbrella organization covering 95 percent of all cruise ships, including those owned by the industry’s largest operators. Costa Deliziosa’s arrival in Genoa follows worldwide efforts by many cruise operators to bring their ships safely home and repatriate those on board, amid numerous outbreaks of the…