The Income Tax (I-T) department of the government of India has indicated that it will soon send a Rs 650 crore show-cause notice to German luxury car maker, BMW.

The company has been served with the tax notice after Department of Revenue Intelligence and the Customs Department, Chennai found that the super car manufacturer has indulged in customs duty evasion. Officials have said that that the income tax department is likely to send the show cause notice to the company within two weeks.

India's apex court, the Supreme Court of India has dismissed a plea challenging Vedanta-Cairn deal valued at US 8.5 billion on Thursday.

The SC threw out a PIL that challenged the validity of the deal. A bench of justices K. S. Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra ruled that the decision was taken by the central government and the ONGC based on the deal and the court will not interfere with a judgment on the decision thatwas taken by parties in business dealing after due deliberations.

One of India's leading state-owned bank, Punjab National Bank (PNB) has recorded a fall of 20.6 per cent in tis net profit during the quarter from January to March, 2013.

Future Retail, which was formerly called Pantaloon Retail, suffered steep declines in sales and net profit in the final quarter of the last financial year.

The company announced that its standalone net profit more than halved to Rs 2.5 crore in the quarter ended March 31, as against Rs 5.4 crore in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.

Net profit from core operations slipped a whopping 83 per cent to Rs 2 crore during the fourth quarter, from Rs 12 crore in the fourth quarter of the previous year.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is mulling a plan to make it compulsory for airlines to install cameras in their planes' cockpits so that pilots could be kept under watch.

It is the several shocking stories of on-duty pilots' shocking behavior that forced the civil aviation regulator to mull a plan to make cameras mandatory in cockpits.

The Special Investigation Branch of Customs is reportedly probing whether luxury car maker BMW AG's Indian arm has evaded custom duty.

A source from the Customs department has revealed that the Indian tax authorities believe that German car maker BMW's Indian arm has evaded taxes to the tune of more than Rs 500 crore.

Continuing protests against the local body tax (LBT) could lead to illegal storage of goods, black-marketing, higher prices and even looting of shops, Maharashtra police said.

The state police said that the businessmen community is unaware about the tax, and suggested that the government should use social networking sites to publicize the benefits of tax.

State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH) on Wednesday reported a year-on-year decline of 21 per cent in net profit for the fourth quarter of FY2012-13, mainly because of higher provisioning for bad assets.

SBH said that higher provisioning for bad assets dragged its net profit down to Rs 380 crore in the three months ended March 31, 2013, from Rs 481 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year.

For the full fiscal year of 2012-13, the bank's net profit slipped 3.7 per cent to Rs 1,250 crore, as against Rs 1,298 crore in the previous fiscal.

It is the responsibility of the government and tax authorities to check money laundering, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said.

RBI Governor D Subbarao said that banks neither the central bank nor individual banks were directly responsible to inquire about the source of income.

Speaking on the topic, Subbarao said, "RBI is not directly involved... Even banks are not directly responsible. They are not expected to inquire about the source of income. It is for government and tax authorities to check money laundering."

Euro gained compared to USD after the statement of ECB' Mersch regarding the ABS market. European agencies are looking at ways to restart ABS market to increase the lending for SME sector.

The Euro gained further ground after the statement. There was speculation and the Euro was trading at 1.3160 compared to USD.

In terms of GBP/ USD, the demand was higher before the BoE policy decision today. GBP/USD was at 1.5539.

Indian currency lost further ground to USD after a good start for the day. USD-INR was at 54.25 while Euro-INR was at 71.40.

New Zealand’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) has admitted that it had made an intervention in the foreign exchange markets in the previous month in order to lower the value of the currency.

While speaking in front of the Parliament's finance and expenditure select committee, Governor Graeme Wheeler said, “That intervention will not materially change the level of the exchange rate but could take potentially the tops off rallies. In terms of activity, there's been an intervention.”

According to the latest data released, the total exports from China increased 14.7 per cent during the month of April, 2013 compared to the same month of the previous year.

Princess Diana’s younger brother, Charles Earl Spencer has said that he is planning to close down a museum he opened to honour the Britain’s famous princess.

Reports suggests that Spencer is planning to close down the museum that is located at their family home at Althorp next year and handover the objects to Prince William and Prince Harry, his two nephews. Spencer had opened the museum in 1998 after the princess was killed in a car crash in 1997. Diana: A Celebration has been on exhibit in Northamptonshire at Althorp for years.

South Korean electronics giant, LG has said that it is planning to launch two new smartphones in its L series called, LG Optimus L3 and LG Optimus L5 in the Indian market.

The LG Optimus L3 II features a 3.2-inch QVGA IPS display and is powered by a 1GHz single core processor with 512MB of RAM. It 4GB of internal storage and comes with a powerful 1,540mAh battery. It runs on runs on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) and Optimus 3.0 UI.

It is believe that the new Ford EcoSport fromt eh American automaker will come with an Emergency Assistance System in the Indian market.

The new Emergency Assistance System of Ford will include delivering a critical voice message directly to emergency operators in case the vehicle is involved in an accident and in which the airbags of the vehicle have been deployed or fuel pump are turned off. The system will also enable hand-free allowing passengers to communicate.

Global IT giant, Oracle has said on Wednesday that it would sell 5.3 per cent stake in Oracle Financial Services Software (OFSS) to comply with regulatory requirements in India.

India’s third-largest information technology services company, Wipro has said that it is acquiring a minority stake in privately held US-based big data science firm called, Opera Solutions LLC in a deal valued at $30 million or Rs. 162 crore.

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has ruled against granting permission to Sterlite Industries Ltd, which is a unit of UK-based Vedanta Group, for beginning operations at its copper smelting plant in Tuticorin district of Tamil Nadu.

A bench headed by NGT chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar noted that the expert committee report has clarified that the emission levels and ambient air quality remain under prescribed levels but said that the permission to start operations cannot be given due to reports of a gas leak from the plant.

India’s largest drug-maker, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd has recorded a disappointing 90 per cent fall in net profit during the first quarter of the year from January to March, 2013.

The company has said that its consolidated net profit fell 90 per cent to Rs. 126 crore during the first quarter compared to Rs. 1,247 crore recorded in the same quarter of the previous year when the company had exclusive rights to a generic version of cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor in the US market.

HSBC has said in a regulatory filing yesterday that it is cooperating with US Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue System (IRS) in their investigations on whether HSBC companies and employees played a role in tax evasion by some of the customers.

HSBC has hinted that it expects heavy penalties for the involvement of its Indian unit in tax evasion by some of the US based Indian origin customers. The US tax department is looking investigation if American residents of Indian origin with accounts with HSBC India were involved in evading US taxes.