A slight recovery in prices and slowdown in demand has resulted in gold imports declining sharply from the previous month

Gold imports have declined by over 15% to 28.8 tonnes during February compared to the previous month following slight recovery in prices and slowdown in demand due to the current off-season, reports PTI.

The imports of the yellow metal stood at 34 tonnes in January, according to data from the Bombay Bullion Association.

According to experts, gold prices had recovered marginally during February compared to the previous month, negatively affecting shipments. Imports also fell due to low demand in the absence of any major trigger in the current off-season.

In January, gold had closed at $1,079.20 an ounce (28.34 grams) against $1116.70 an ounce in global markets in February due to weakness in the dollar.

DQ Entertainment International has inked three licensing deals; looks at expanding revenue base

DQ Entertainment International (DQE) has recently finalised three licensing deals for its upcoming animated series—The Jungle Book—with School Pack Inc, D'Arpege, (both Paris-based firms) and NOGA TV, Israel. The company is also planning to come up with four new animated television shows within the next month. 

“The total worldwide retail sales of licensed merchandise are approximately $200 billion, increasing at over 5% every year. We, as owners of the intellectual property of several globally famous brands, (have) the potential to hugely benefit from the licensing industry. A number of similar agreements are currently under negotiation and have opened up new and multiple revenue streams for DQE,” said Tapaas Chakravarti, chairman & CEO, DQE Group. 

The Jungle Book, an animated series comprising 52 episodes, is 100% owned by DQE. According to sources, the company is investing €8 million-€10 million in each new project. Its other new projects are mainly television shows with a total runtime of approximately 26 hours. The company might co-produce these new projects with other international players—Walt Disney might be one of the partners.

The company is tight-lipped over the new investment plans and declined to give any details on the new projects, as the company is listing on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Monday (29th March). “I cannot speak on the new television features and the investments planned by the company,” said Mr Chakravarti.

School Pack Inc will be responsible for customised manufacturing and selling of branded school products like school bag packs, school bags, school bags with wheels, courier bags, string bags and other items targeted at school-going children. 

Similarly, D'Arpege SA will be handling the company’s outdoor products like tents, balls, inflatables, punching bags, gloves and garden equipment. The company said that both these deals were signed through DQE co-production partners TF1 Enterprise, Paris, and some other important deals are under negotiation for licensing, merchandising and publishing.

NOGA TV has signed a merchandising deal along with Ahim Fried Ltd and D&C TV Ltd to manufacture merchandise and sell a variety of bedroom items branded for children with Jungle Book characters like quilts, pillows, blankets, bed linen, and towels.

According to sources, the Walt Disney Company has bagged the pay television rights for The Jungle Book for four years for 27 countries and is negotiating for adding a few more countries. The company is also launching the trailer of the new animated series Peter Pan on YouTube in the next three days and is planning to launch the animated series next month at the Cannes film festival for children.

A major battle seems to be brewing in the regulatory space, where lines are being drawn to establish purview of authority

Officials of the financial services department and the insurance department have apparently asked the department of capital markets that the latter should not be poking its nose into unit-linked insurance plans (ULIPs), since it is not a capital market product.

The capital markets department of the finance ministry would have normally have backed SEBI’s stance, but it appears that the mandarins in the highest echelons of government do not want the market regulator to infringe upon what they feel is the insurance regulator’s domain, as far as ULIPs are concerned.

Moneylife has previously reported how a clear-cut turf war is going on between various regulators, the bone of contention being overlapping of regulatory supervision.

Most recently, capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) triggered a huge debate on whether ULIPs, being collective investment schemes, ought to be regulated by SEBI and not the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA). It slapped show-cause notices on insurance companies, who rushed to the IRDA which not only joined the battle, but also promptly took the issue to the finance ministry. This action by SEBI has resulted in a full-blown war between the two regulators, which is slowly reaching boiling point.

However, there is a larger picture involved here. In a country where we have multiple regulators overseeing different financial industries, there is a lot of scope for overlapping of interests due to the complex, inter-connected nature of these industries. We have separate regulators for pensions, insurance, capital markets and banks. All of these are so intricately intertwined that it is very easy for regulatory purview of one authority to spill over onto another’s territory.

Capital markets are an inevitable subset of each of these industries. Significant portions of money that flow into pension, insurance or banking channels end up finding their way to the capital markets. In such circumstances, SEBI would feel the need to make its supervisory presence felt in other industries too. Should it be allowed to do so?

This multi-regulatory environment is likely to result in more such clashes between authorities in the future. If not settled immediately, it poses huge systemic risks that could bring down the country’s financial regulatory machinery like a house of cards.

The High Level Co-ordination Committee (HLCC) on Capital and Financial Markets, which has representatives from all the above regulators, was created to strengthen coordination between various financial sector regulators and plug the gaps in the current regulatory framework. However, this brainchild of the government seems all at sea at the moment.