Suits & Sayings: ET’s weekly roundup of the wackiest whispers & murmurs in corporate corridors & policy parlours

Star Nuptials
Tech hotshots and Digital India enthusiasts will be dressed to the nines, bound for the plush confines of Delhi’s Taj Palace hotel in early July to attend IT and law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s daughter Aditi’s gala wedding bash. President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are likely to be present along with other government heavyweights, raising the sarkari quotient by several notches. Small wonder the guest list is shrouded in secrecy for what is being billed as a super high-voltage networking event.

Time to Economise
5G may be the new buzzword and the government wants to ensure India doesn’t lag behind the rest of the world on this score. But the declining health of telcos appears to be haunting policy makers. At a mega 5G conclave in the capital on May 12, a top telecom department official is learnt to have openly voiced concern about how a financially stressed sector in the throes of a brutal price war could be expected to find the big bucks needed to invest in super-expensive 5G networks. Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha too had recently told ET that it might not be an appropriate time to sell 5G airwaves as such fifth-generation technology is in work-in-progress mode globally.

Graduation Day
The heads of two of India’s key lenders are taking a break from busy schedules to attend the graduation ceremonies of their children. While one company has just finished a huge fund-raising programme, the other has just announced its financial results with ballooning non-performing assets giving investors heartburn. Both will be overseas for a week as proud fathers. Of the two grads, one is tipped to succeed his father at one of India’s private banks.

Two in the Running
This column has made mention several times of a Swiss bank looking for a head in India after its fortunes plummeted in the past several years. Now we hear two senior rainmakers have been shortlisted for the post. One is from a local bank who joined it from a rival Swiss bank while the other is from an American investment bank.

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