Coinbase Inc announced it would suspend trading in cryptocurrency XRP after U.S. regulators last week charged associated blockchain firm Ripple with conducting a $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering. The move by San Francisco-based Coinbase comes as the firm is preparing for a stock market listing and confidentially applied with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it had administered 2,127,143 first doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Monday morning and had distributed 11,445,175 doses. The tally of vaccine doses distributed and the number of people who received the first dose are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, COVID-19 vaccines.

Shares of HDFC Bank Ltd underperformed benchmark indices in 2020 for the first time in seven years as the pandemic deepened wider investor concerns over the asset quality of banks. Shares of India’s largest private lender gained 11.1% so far this year in its worst performance since 2013. In comparison, the Sensex and Nifty rose 14.8% and 14%, respectively.

Amazon.com Inc. requested India’s markets regulator to wait for the final order of a Singapore court before clearing the merger of Future group companies, a move that is seen as a precursor to an eventual sale of its assets to Reliance Industries Ltd. In a 21 December letter, Amazon asked Sebi that the Singapore arbitration court’s ruling has been held valid under India’s arbitration law.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. witnessed a second day of frenetic selling driven by fears that antitrust scrutiny will spread beyond Jack Ma’s internet empire and engulf the country’s most powerful corporations. Alibaba and its three largest rivals-Tencent Holdings Ltd., Meituan and JD.com Inc. reduced nearly $200 billion in Hong Kong over the two sessions since Thursday.

Japan on Monday identified a coronavirus variant found in South Africa. It is the first such detection in a nation that has already identified more than a dozen cases of another variant that is spreading rapidly in Britain. A woman in her 30s who arrived in Japan on Dec. 19 was found to be infected with the new virus variant, the health ministry said.

IT services company 3i Infotech on Monday said that its board has approved the slump sale of its global software products business to private equity firm Apax Partners for a sum of Rs1,000 crore. The software products business will be acquired by a newly formed company named Azentio Software, wholly owned by Apax.

Mahindra & Mahindra, parent of SUV maker SYMC issued corporate guarantees earlier this year to some of its global creditors like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and BNP Paribas. It ensured safeguarding their exposure as SYMC was on the brink of bankruptcy. For others like Citibank, the Indian conglomerate’s corporate guarantee was not enough. So, M&M had to issue an indemnity letter.

AU Small Finance Bank on December 28 announced its partnership with ICICI Prudential Life Insurance. Through the corporate agency arrangement, over 18 lakh customers of AU Bank across over 700 banking touchpoints in 13 states and 2 Union territories, will have an easy access to the entire suite of customer-centric protection and long-term savings products of ICICI Prudential Life.

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Private equity (PE) group, Blackstone, has notified the Competition Commission of India (CCI) of its proposed acquisition of Piramal Glass Pvt Ltd (PGPL) and its subsidiaries, on Monday. ET had previously reported that the global PE firm had submitted a binding offer in October, valuing the Ajay Piramal-owned glass manufacturing and sales business at about Rs 6,200 crore.

Agri-tech startup Aqgromalin has raised Rs 2 crore from angel investors participating from the Middle East. The company aims to utilise the capital in setting up 500 micro-farms in the states of Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh. Aqgromalin supplements the income of small landholding farmers through ready to implement micro-farms mainly in the areas of Animal Husbandry and Aquaculture.

Country's largest insurer Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has sold 2 per cent stake in private sector lender ICICI Bank through open market transactions. The insurer sold 13.8 crore shares, representing 2.002 per cent stake of ICICI Bank, over a period of November 27 to December 24, 2020, the bank said in a regulatory filing.

Serum Institute of India (SII), which is working towards manufacturing the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in India, says it expects the government to approve the shot for emergency use in a few days. SII's Chief Executive Officer Adar Poonawalla further added that the company had already produced 40 million to 50 million doses of the vaccine.

Markets regulator Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI) has granted the go-ahead to small lender Suryoday Small Finance Bank to float its Initial Public Offering (IPO). This  IPO comprises fresh issuance of 1,15,95,000 equity shares and an offer for sale of up to 84,66,796 equity scrips by existing shareholders, according to the draft papers filed with the regulator, PTI reported.