Connect with us
Wednesday,21-October-2026
Breaking News

Business

Real estate barons betrayed people’s trust, pulled down a growth sector

Published

on

The Supertech Twin Towers in Noida that are supposed to be decimated next month is representative of the fall of the real estate czars in the recent past, especially in Delhi-NCR.

The real estate landscape in the region suffered multiple blows as leading names of the trade were mired in scandals in the recent past and some of them even landed in jail.

This is a story of how real estate barons have played with the system, betrayed people’s trust and created multiple crises.

Ashutosh Kashyap, Director, Advisory Services, Colliers India pre 2012, said the residential real estate dynamics of NCR were characterised by double-digit capital value appreciation coupled with robust absorption.

On one hand, prospective buyers were in a hurry to buy, apprehensive of price rise, while on the other hand, robust absorption motivated developers to go on a project launch spree.

In the absence of a proper regulatory regime (such as RERA, which came later), the financial ring-fencing of projects was not proper, which allowed developers to use booking money from one project to acquire more land, which was only based on the underlying premise that the robust absorption will sustain.

“The reason, most of these happened in Noida was because the city offered the option of staggered payment for allotted land. This allowed builders to accumulate and launch more projects in anticipation of robust demand. The residential real estate segment witnessed a prolonged muted period (till 2020-21), especially for the primary market. Most of the developers that built their pipelines on anticipated demand found it difficult to sustain this phase and what we see today is the result of the same,” Kashyap added.

A number of real estate czars have faced enforcement action and some even bankruptcy. This has in turn caused immense despair and hardship for home buyers stuck with incomplete projects having poured in their life savings.

Members of the Chandra family of the Unitech Group are in jail. The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to propose steps to bring back homebuyers money amounting to Rs 5,000 crore diverted to tax havens, which was revealed in a forensic audit.

At the beginning of the hearing, Additional Solicitor General N. Venkataraman, representing the Centre-appointed board of the Unitech, submitted before a bench headed by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud that over a thousand crore is outside the country and some money should come back, which could be utilised for the purpose of construction, and the court should ask ED, what progress has been made so far.

In April last year, the ED attached movable and immovable properties worth over Rs 300 crore in 10 separate cases of money laundering.

The agency had said that Unitech Group had diverted proceeds of crime, which are over Rs 300 crore to Carnoustie Group and in turn, the entities of Carnoustie Group purchased several immovable properties from these funds.

In December 2019, the top court had directed the Centre to take over the management of Unitech by appointing independent directors after a forensic audit revealed that home buyers’ money worth over Rs 5,000 crore had been diverted to tax havens such as Cyprus. The diversion of money affected the completion of at least 74 projects and damaged the interests of nearly 12,000 homebuyers.

Also in jail is the Ambience Group owner Raj Singh Gehlot. An (ED) probe has revealed that the group has not made the obligatory contribution of Rs 462 crore for the construction of a Rs 1,272 crore luxury hotel project at Shahdara in the national capital, violating the loan conditions of a consortium of banks, led by the Jammu & Kashmir Bank.

Business

Tesla shareholders to vote on Musk board seat and $158 billion pay award on Dec 3

Published

on

Tesla has scheduled its annual shareholder meeting for December 3, where investors will vote on the re-election of Chief Executive Elon Musk and other directors, along with an advisory resolution on executive compensation and the appointment of the company’s auditor.

According to a proxy filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla has nominated Musk, Chair Robyn Denholm and director JB Straubel for new three-year terms on the board.

Shareholders will also be asked to approve, on a non-binding basis, executive compensation for 2025 and ratify PricewaterhouseCoopers as Tesla’s independent auditor for the fiscal year ending December 31.

Moreover, the proxy statement disclosed executive compensation attributed to Musk for 2025 of about $158.36 billion, consisting entirely of stock-based awards.

The figure reflects the accounting value assigned to performance-linked equity grants and does not represent cash compensation received by the billionaire entrepreneur.

Tesla said the awards remain contingent on the achievement of specified market capitalisation and operational targets.

The company previously reported in May that Musk’s realised compensation for 2025 was zero with none of the 12 tranches tied to the incentive program having been earned.

The equity package comprises roughly 423.7 million restricted shares that vest only after predetermined milestones are met.

In addition, any earned shares are generally subject to a five-year holding requirement, with limited exceptions.

The annual meeting will be held at Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas facility in Austin at 3 pm. However, Central Time and will also be accessible online.

Additionally, the filing highlighted several board-level links between Tesla and SpaceX.

However, the proxy statement did not reference any potential merger involving Tesla and SpaceX.

Apart from that, Elon Musk-backed SpaceX is scheduled to announce its third-quarter results on Tuesday after its shares fell nearly 35 per cent from their post-listing high.

This will be the company’s second quarterly earnings report since going public in June, following a volatile stretch for the stock.

The stock has dropped around 35 per cent from the record high it hit soon after its debut.

Continue Reading

Business

Oversight Board criticises Meta over election-related moderation errors

Published

on

The independent Oversight Board on Tuesday criticised Meta, saying the social media firm must improve the transparency and consistency of its election-related enforcement after a series of moderation failures involving political accounts in the United States and Brazil.

In a statement, the Board said it remained concerned by what it described as recurring shortcomings in Meta’s election integrity efforts and warned that mistakes in content moderation risk either suppressing legitimate political speech or undermining public confidence in electoral processes.

It pointed to the removal of political activist accounts linked to the ‘No Kings’ movement in the United States and restrictions placed on accounts associated with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during election periods as examples of enforcement actions that fuelled concerns about electoral interference.

According to the Board, the erroneous action against the No Kings Instagram account should have been detected by Meta’s safeguards designed to prevent moderation mistakes.

Meanwhile, it also questioned why the accounts were not included in Meta’s Cross-Check program which provides additional human review for high-profile civic and political entities before actions are taken that could affect participation in major public events.

The Board said Meta’s enforcement of fraud-related policies against ad accounts linked to Lula during Brazil’s presidential election campaign similarly represented a failure that should have been escalated to specialist reviewers.

The comments revisit concerns raised by the board following Brazil’s 2022 presidential election, when it called on Meta to establish measurable benchmarks for assessing the effectiveness of its election integrity programs and to publish relevant performance data.

While Meta regularly discloses broad statistics such as the number of advertisements archived or accounts removed, the Board said the company has yet to provide public metrics that adequately measure the effectiveness of its enforcement systems or identify significant shortcomings.

Moreover, the Board also warned that the wrongful removal of political content ahead of elections could have a chilling effect on political participation and potentially undermine electoral integrity.

“Automated enforcement tools must take language, nuance, and political context into account to better protect political speech that does not incite violence,” according to Oversight Board.

Meta had pledged in 2025 to reduce moderation errors while allowing greater freedom of expression around elections and political debate.

The Board said recent incidents suggest further improvements are needed for the company to meet that commitment.

Continue Reading

Business

Indian stock markets closed on account of Dussehra

Published

on

Indian stock markets will remain closed on Tuesday on account of Dussehra with trading suspended across major segments on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE).

Trading in equities, equity derivatives, securities lending and borrowing (SLB), currency derivatives and interest rate derivatives will remain closed for the day on both exchanges, according to them.

Notably, normal trading on NSE and BSE will resume on Wednesday.

However, the commodity derivatives segment will follow a different schedule. Trading will remain suspended during morning session from 9 am to 5 pm before resuming in evening. The session will continue till 11:30 pm or 11:55 pm depending on contract.

Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX) will not remain closed for entire day. Exchange will suspend trading during morning session from 9 am to 5 pm and reopen for evening session from 5 pm.

Investors will be able to trade commodities such as gold, silver, crude oil and base metals during evening session.

Meanwhile, National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) will remain closed for both sessions on account of Dussehra.

Following Dussehra holiday, three regular trading holidays remain on NSE and BSE calendars for rest of 2026 — November 10, Tuesday, Diwali-Balipratipada; November 24, Tuesday, Prakash Gurpurb Sri Guru Nanak Dev; and December 25, Friday, Christmas.

In addition, exchanges have also scheduled a special Muhurat Trading session for November 8, 2026 on occasion of Diwali Laxmi Pujan. Timings for special session will be announced separately.

Notably, in the last session equity benchmarks closed in negative territory amid selling pressure in the banking and information technology (IT) sector stocks.

Sensex decreased over 850 points or 1 per cent to settle at 73,852.90 on Monday. Similarly, Nifty closed 257.20 points or 1.11 per cent lower at 22,888.95.

Continue Reading

Trending