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Want Paytm in my portfolio, says valuation guru Aswath Damodaran

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Aswath-Damodaran

India’s leading digital payments and financial services platform Paytm is heading for a market debut with an aim to raise $2.2 billion, which is touted to be India’s largest IPO. And the IPO is already getting the gurus in the financial services industry excited.

Aswath Damodaran, the award-winning Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University, recently said in an interview with an Indian news channel that he would place his bets on Paytm. “Paytm has some real potential because I think this is a business which is huge, payment processing and financial services is huge. If I can get Paytm at the right price, I would want it in my portfolio,” said Damodaran.

Damodaran teaches equity valuations at Stern, and is also referred to as the “dean of valuation”.

Multiple other startups like Ola are also reported to be aiming for a stock market debut. When asked about what makes a company or sector interesting, Damodaran said, “There are two things I look for sectors that are likely to be disrupted: one is how big the market is. Financial services is a huge market, automobiles is a huge market. The other thing that I look for is the existing status quo.

“One indicator that a business is going to be disrupted is if nobody’s happy — customers are not happy, companies are not happy, regulators are not happy. Let’s face it, that’s the state of the game right now in financial services. I think there are sectors where disruption is going to come simply because things are not working the way it is right now.”

But if he had to choose between Paytm and Ola? “I would prefer Paytm to Ola because the ridesharing business is a complete disaster around the world. Ridesharing is one of those businesses where they have figured out how to grow but nobody seems to have figured out how to make money and it’s not just Ola, it’s Didi, Grab, Uber, Lyft,” he said in the interview.

Paytm offers payment services, commerce and cloud services, and financial services to 333 million consumers and over 21 million merchants, as on March 31, 2021. Paytm is India’s largest payments platform based on the number of consumers, number of merchants, number of consumer to merchant transactions and revenue, as on March 31, 2021.

Paytm is the largest payment gateway aggregator in India based on total transactions, with the widest ecosystem of payment instruments. The company’s lending business (offered in collaboration with financial institution partners), includes personal loans, merchant loans, as well as its Buy Now, Pay Later product Paytm Postpaid. Paytm’s financial institution partners disbursed 1.4 million loans in Q4FY21.

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

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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.

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Oversight Board criticises Meta over election-related moderation errors

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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.

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Business

Indian stock markets closed on account of Dussehra

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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.

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