S&P Global Ratings on Monday expressed scepticism over a recommendation by the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) working group on permitting corporate ownership in private banks.  

The American credit rating agency said that it is fraught with risk given India's weak corporate governance in the wake of large corporate defaults over the past few years.  

The agency further added that the RBI's internal working group's concerns regarding the concentration of economic power, as well as financial stability in permitting corporate houses to own banks, are some of the potential risks.  

The agency believes the RBI will be faced with several challenges in supervising non-financial sector entities at a time when the health of financial sector is weak. Last week, an RBI panel had proposed that large corporations may be permitted to promote banks, as well as raising the cap on promoters' stake in private sector banks to 26%, from 15% at present.

The Reserve Bank of India has reached one million followers on Twitter. With this, the central bank of India is now the first-ever such bank in the world to have reached these many followers in the micro-blogging site.

RBI has beaten the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank on Twitter by emerging as the most popular central bank on the microblogging site with one million followers.

According to the the latest information available on the RBI's twitter handle '@RBI', the number of followers has increased from 9.66 lakh on September 27, 2020 to one million or 10 lakh.

"RBI Twitter account reaches one million followers today. A new milestone. Congratulations to all my colleagues in RBI," Governor Shaktikanta Das said in a tweet on Sunday. Das has a separate Twitter handle with 1.35 lakh followers.

Markets regulator Sebi has moved the Supreme Court seeking direction to two Sahara firms to pay Rs 62,602.90 crore in compliance with the court's earlier orders, failing which the group's chief Subrata Roy be taken into custody.

Sebi said the contemnors, Subrata Roy and his two firms-- Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Ltd. (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation Ltd. (SHICL) -- are in gross violation of various orders passed by the court regarding the deposit of entire monies collected along with the interest.

Despite the top court granting various reliefs to Roy and his firms, they have neglected and failed to comply with various orders passed by this court, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said.

Public sector major Union Bank of India offers the lowest interest rate in the education loan space currently, starting at 6.8 per cent for a Rs 20-lakh loan with a tenure of seven years.

Nine other banks on the list of lenders that offer the cheapest interest rates on education loans also happen to be public sector banks, as per data from loan aggregator firm Bankbazaar.

Public sector banks offer the best rates

Central Bank of India, Bank of India and Bank of Baroda charge a mere five basis points more than what Union Bank does – their student loans start at 6.85 percent.

The trio is closely followed by the country’s largest bank State Bank of India (SBI) and Punjab National Bank (PNB), which charge 6.9 percent for Rs 20-lakh education loans with seven-year tenures.

State-owned UCO Bank has cut home loan interest rates by 25 basis points with effect from Wednesday.

The lender said revised home loan interest rates start from 6.90 per cent, irrespective of loan amount and occupation of the borrower.

The state-owned bank is confident of meeting the Rs 3,000 crore lending target for retail and MSME segments for the festive season months of October and November;  around Rs 1,900 crore had already been sanctioned.

Earlier, UCO Bank slashed its one-year MCLR to 7.35 per cent from 7.40 per cent