Mumbai: Safety of foreign exchange reserves is the most important consideration before the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) because reserves are ultimately borrowed funds which have to be handled very carefully, deputy governor Rohit Jain said. Return should not be the only consideration when deploying these reserves and that is why a lot of care is taken to deploy these funds.

Jain who as deputy governor is responsible for departments of external investments, foreign exchange and risk management among others said in response to a question by State Bank of India (SBI) managing director Ravi Ranjan at the SBI Banking and Economics Conclave.

Read more: India’s forex reserves drop $4.92 billion to $780.78 billion as of September 11

“We track market variables and parameters very closely. We keep on the lookout for better opportunities. The principal considerations in managing forex reserves are three, safety, liquidity and return. All three are important but the order is also important. Safety, liquidity and return (in that order). Because these are borrowed funds, these forex reserves have to be handled very carefully,” Jain said. He pointed that the latest foreign exchange reserves at $781 billion is the highest ever reserves the country has ever had and is the fifth largest in the world.

“Return should not be the only consideration when deploying these reserves and that is why a lot of care is taken. Very clear objective frameworks are laid out and we manage these reserves with the intent that they provide very strong external resilience for the country and foreign investors and foreign counterparties have the confidence that the country has enough forex reserves to support its needs,” Jain said in an elaborate reply on how the regulator will manage the $133 billion received through the FCNR (B) scheme.

Read more: RBI revises FCNR(B) inflows upwards to USD 133 billion after robust response from NRIs
Later speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the conference Jaina said in the meeting with the regulator, banks have expressed confidence that the new funds due to the FCNR (B) inflows will be absorbed. “Banks will take their own call based on credit demand which is fairly broad based. There is no concern on the deployment of the deposits,” Jain said.Replying to another question on state governments increasingly resorting to market borrowings for financing their gross fiscal deficit, Jain said that the RBI has been telling states to do more reissuances so that the secondary market activity develops which state governments have been complying with.

“We have also focused on a benchmark issuance strategy which we have been doing for the central government. We are now asking state governments also to adopt a benchmark issuance strategy and so far 19 states have already adopted this new strategy. The remaining states are also likely to join in shortly. This will greatly improve the liquidity and the secondary market in the state government security and I believe that we will be able to manage these state government borrowings much better,” Jain said.

In his speech at the conference, Jain said that financial institutions must develop the institutional capacity to identify technology vulnerabilities early, make informed decisions, limit the impact of disruptions, protect customers and recover critical services. “Technology investment should be treated also as a risk investment – it is an investment in continuity, confidence and financial stability. Scale in digital payments and financial services must not come at the expense of trust and resilience. AI is expected to fundamentally change financial services – but governance must precede scale,” Jain said.

Mialex plans to rescue and refit Grecian Mill

A former cotton mill on the verge of collapse could soon be transformed into 64 new apartments, shops and cafes. Grecian Mill on Worsley Road North in Walkden is in a ‘dilapidated and deteriorating’ condition, with the structure suffering a partial collapse in 2021.

Now town planners Mialex Ltd have submitted plans to rescue and modernise the building, transforming the currently ‘uninhabitable’ upper floors into seven duplex and 55 residential apartments. The ground floor would hold around 135 sqm of commercial space, including a cafe and offices. The developer also plans to include an internal winter garden and external landscaping.

Much of the Victorian building would be kept and restored, with some more modern extensions due to be demolished. A ‘sawtooth roof’ would crown the red-brick base, drawing from the historic shape of mill architecture, according to designs by Drome Architects.

If approved by the council’s planning department, the plans could present ‘a considered and deliverable strategy for the long-term reuse of a prominent but severely deteriorated historic mill complex’, says a planning statement.

The statement continued: “The proposals offer a robust and balanced response to a complex site. They secure the reuse of an important historic structure, remove unsafe and poor-quality elements, improve the townscape contribution of the site, and deliver new homes on previously developed land in a sustainable location.”

The plans come as the building continues to decline. In February 2021, part of the structure collapsed, sending substantial sections of masonry crashing through the roof of the garage below. The A575 was temporarily closed and emergency works had to be carried out to secure the building.

According to recent surveys, the mill ‘remains in poor condition’ with internal floors and the roof ‘severely impacted by delay’, according to developers. The Victorian building is at risk of further deterioration without ‘extensive remediation works’.

To find all the planning applications, traffic diversions, road layout changes, alcohol licence applications and more in your community, visit the Public Notices Portal.

Asia-Pacific’s financial institutions have split into two distinct tracks in the race to build programmable digital money. Hong Kong and Singapore are already moving tokenised deposits into commercial production, while Thailand is deliberately taking a slower, more sequenced route toward a baht-pegged stablecoin. The contrast says as much about regulatory philosophy as it does about market readiness, and it is shaping where institutional capital and infrastructure investment land next.

Hong Kong moves from pilot to real money

Hong Kong’s tokenisation programme has gone furthest, fastest. In November 2025 the Hong Kong Monetary Authority shifted its tokenised deposit pilot from test transactions to real-value settlement, bringing in seven banks to issue tokenised deposits and settle interbank transfers on a shared platform: Bank of China (Hong Kong), China Construction Bank (Asia), Fubon Bank, Fusion Bank, Standard Chartered Hong Kong, Bank of East Asia and HSBC. Asset managers BlackRock and Franklin Templeton joined as participants alongside Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing and payment network JETCO.

The initial focus is tokenised money market fund transactions, letting banks and asset managers manage liquidity and treasury positions in real time rather than waiting on traditional settlement cycles. The programme runs through all of 2026, using Hong Kong’s existing Real Time Gross Settlement system before the HKMA upgrades to 24/7 settlement in tokenised central bank money. Four themes frame the wider experimentation: fixed income and investment funds, liquidity management, green and sustainable finance, and trade and supply chain finance.

Standard Chartered has already taken the model commercial. Its Hong Kong and Singapore units launched a tokenised deposit solution built on Ant International’s blockchain treasury platform, Whale, moving the collaboration from pilot to production and covering HKD, CNH, USD and SGD for Ant’s intragroup treasury flows. HSBC has gone further still, debuting its Tokenized Deposit Service in Hong Kong with Ant International as first client before extending the product to corporate clients in the US and UAE in the first half of 2026.

Singapore leans on corporate treasury use cases

Singapore’s push has centred on the same Standard Chartered-Ant International partnership, with the bank’s Singapore unit enabling SGD and USD transactions that interoperate with the Hong Kong leg’s HKD, CNH and USD capabilities. For Ant International, which runs merchant services and treasury solutions for SMEs worldwide, the appeal is near real-time, 24/7 liquidity movement between entities without relying on traditional correspondent banking rails.

More broadly, Singapore is positioning itself alongside Hong Kong and the UAE as a jurisdiction that can combine regulatory clarity with credible financial infrastructure to attract institutional stablecoin and tokenisation business, a competitive dynamic playing out as more of the region’s fintech investment concentrates in fewer, better-regulated hubs.

Why banks prefer tokenised deposits for now

The tilt toward tokenised deposits over stablecoins is not incidental. Regulatory reclassification is doing much of the work: both the EU’s MiCAR framework and the US GENIUS Act treat most stablecoins as e-money tokens requiring specific licensing that many issuers do not hold, while tokenised deposits, as regulated bank liabilities, sidestep that compliance burden entirely. There is also a protection gap that matters to treasurers moving large balances: stablecoins carry no deposit insurance, whereas tokenised deposits do.

The competitive pressure behind this shift is real. In IBM’s 2026 banking survey, 42 percent of executives said it was likely that major corporations would issue their own stablecoins, a scenario that could erode banks’ transaction fees, deposit bases and customer data. Sixty-three percent of corporate banking executives now see providing tokenised services, rather than resisting them, as their primary role going forward.

Thailand’s wholesale-first, carbon-linked approach

Thailand is building toward the same destination by a different, slower road. The Bank of Thailand’s design study for a baht-backed stablecoin is nearing completion, with a strict full-reserve requirement: tokens pegged 1:1 to the baht and backed by reserves held in segregated accounts at licensed institutions, redeemable on demand. Public hearings are expected before the end of 2026, with formal regulations targeted for late 2026 or early 2027, as Thailand Business News has reported.

The sequencing is deliberate. BoT governor Vitai Ratanakorn has said the stablecoin will function first as a settlement instrument between licensed financial institutions, with any public rollout considered only afterward, an approach that mirrors Hong Kong’s wholesale-first pilot more than it does a retail-facing product launch. Authorities are also examining a role for the stablecoin in carbon credit trading, tying the initiative to Thailand’s net-zero commitments alongside its payments modernisation goals.

This builds on groundwork already laid through the BoT’s wholesale CBDC work under Project Inthanon and mBridge, and its Programmable Payment Sandbox, launched in 2024 and expanded in December 2025 to test baht-backed stablecoins and programmable payment use cases under supervision. The central bank has also used the period to tighten enforcement around unregulated settlement loops, including a crackdown that saw roughly 5,000 accounts linked to peer-to-peer renminbi payment activity suspended between February 2025 and May 2026.

What the contrast means

Hong Kong and Singapore are racing ahead on live, bank-led infrastructure serving multinational treasuries today. Thailand, by contrast, is building toward the same wholesale settlement function but insisting on a completed design study, full-reserve rules and public consultation before anything goes live, a pace consistent with the BoT’s broader caution on digital assets. That gap creates near-term opportunity for regional banks and treasury platforms operating out of Hong Kong and Singapore, but it also means Thai institutions have longer to prepare for a framework designed to avoid the reserve and redemption gaps that regulators elsewhere are still working through.

For now, the practical test will be the BoT’s public hearings later this year and the results emerging from its sandbox, both of which will determine whether Thailand’s cautious sequencing pays off in a more resilient rollout, or simply cedes first-mover advantage to its regional rivals. The broader pattern is one Thailand Business News has tracked across Southeast Asian fintech more generally: rapid regional growth running up against fragmented, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction regulation that leaves institutions weighing speed against consistency.

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When the BBC entered the dining hall for the dinner, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was standing over a table and appeared to be telling an entertaining story that had two others nearby barreled over with laughter.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth was at another table, with a serious look on his face. His wife is sat beside him, with Jared Kushner and White House chief of staff Monica Crowley nearby.

The White House invited scores of US officials, as well as conservative broadcasters, tech industry bosses, social media CEOs and other corporate executives.

Attendees included members of Trump’s cabinet, as well as family members like his children Ivanka, Eric and Tiffany.

Bosses from the tech industry in attendance included Apple’s Tim Cook, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.

Both Cook and Huang were seated at the same table as Trump and Xi. As was Musk, who previously worked in Trump’s administration leading the effort to shrink government.

Other companies whose leaders were in attendance include General Motors, Visa, Paramount Skydance, ExxonMobil and more.

Social media mogul Mark Zuckerberg also attended, as well as Jeff Yaas, the American billionaire who owns a share of TikTok.

“Everybody wanted to be there,” Trump said ahead of the event. “I would say you have the entire tech world, the entire banking world, and a lot more.”

But one notable absence was Anthropic – one of the biggest and most valuable AI firms in the world. The BBC has asked Anthropic if it was invited, or if they chose not to be there.

New Delhi: Inox Clean Energy is likely to file a draft red herring prospectus for a ₹10,000 crore initial public offering of shares with the market regulator before the weekend, in what could be the largest IPO from a private Indian renewable energy company to date, people familiar with the matter said. The planned offering will comprise an issue of fresh shares by the INOXGFL Group company and an offer for sale from some of its existing shareholders, the people said.

The INOXGFL Group did not respond to ET’s queries. Government-backed NTPC Green Energy made a similar-sized IPO in November 2024.

Read more: Sebi clears PRIM route for PMS players to invest in mutual funds, SIFs; Rs 25 lakh minimum ticket

Inox Clean Energy in last December made a confidential DRHP filing with the Securities and Exchange Board of India, but withdrew it later. The latest plan comes after it raised funds privately from a diverse group of investors that included prominent global and local institutions, and expanded capacity through acquisitions in India and overseas. The company operates two related businesses: renewable energy generation and manufacturing of solar photovoltaic modules and cells.

Read more: Snapdeal parent AceVector raises Rs 189 crore from anchors; Negen, Singularity among top investors

It expanded its power generation and manufacturing businesses rapidly over the past year and a half, both organically and through an aggressive M&A strategy.
Inox Neo Energies, the company’s independent power generation vertical, operates renewable power plants with a total capacity of 5 gigawatts. An additional 11 gigawatts of projects are under development.

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