Suits & sayings: Bi-weekly roundup of the wackiest whispers in corporate corridors & policy parlours

ET’s bi-weekly roundup of the wackiest whispers and murmurs in corporate corridors & policy parlours

Pak Plus Plus

A technology industry veteran who has been persuading the government to undertake vital reforms tells us that he’s pleasantly surprised that the mantri concerned is convinced that policy needs to change. But this techie has also discovered a fundamental truth about GoI. Ministers can propose but joint secretaries can oppose – the techie says the JS in the ministry reminded him yet again what our babus can do to the country. “People think India’s bureaucracy is Singaporeminus-minus. But actually we are Pakistan-plus-plus” – is how he sums it up. Hope the mantri can do something about this.

Uber Mystery

The most puzzling question for the Delhi Police in the Uber driver case is this: the man who allegedly raped his passenger took a detour to a five-star hotel that fateful night. He took his Swift Dzire to Ashoka Hotel, a stone’s throw from the PM’s house, without any booking and stayed there for about 30 minutes. Cops can’t figure out what happened in that half hour or why the cabbie was at the hotel. The hotel’s CCTV footage was deleted after 15 days, as per standard policy, making this part of the investigation even more difficult

Akula Again

He’s back, Vikram Akula, that is. SKS may have not been a pleasant experience for him towards the end but his stake sale gave him a war chest and now, as we reported, the man has applied for a licence for a small payments bank. And get this – we hear around a 100 people from SKS may join him. Wow. Clearly Akula’s fights at the boardroom didn’t make him any less popular with the people he had worked with on the office floor.

In a Hedge

HDFC’s ADR and QIP issues were a hit. But wait – is there a cloud in the silver lining? We hear 75% of ADR shares were purchased by hedge funds and the bank’s top guns are less than ecstatic about this. Long term investors like Capital International, Capital Research, Capital World and Vontobel weren’t quite present and the big money came from hedge funds, which are unlikely to hold on to what they bought. So high finance types are wondering whether issue managers got this high profile issue right or not?