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Italy’s stocks and bonds came under  intense pressure   on Friday, with the plunge in the country’s banks wiping $10 billion off their market value. Those who remember the chaos of the euro region’s sovereign debt crisis will be asking, whether this is the start of something much worse. Here’s what financial markets are telling us. Bond Risks The selloff in the nation’s 10-year bonds drove yields up the most since May -- a time when the Five Star Movement and the League parties were forming their coalition, and holding talks with euroskeptics who had  floated the idea  of leaving the euro area. The good news is that the hard-line rhetoric has faded somewhat, meaning the concern in markets is about the size of Italy’s debt load, rather than the risk that it leaves the currency bloc. This is reflected in Italy’s 10-year yield spread over German bunds. That gauge is hovering at around 270 basis points, still short of the year’s highs of around 323 basis points. A...

The mumbai wing of the Serious Fraud Investigation Office has summoned  ICICI Bank  CEO  Chanda Kochhar  and  Axis Bank  CEO  Shikha Sharma  in the Rs 5,000 crore loan extended to Mehul Choksi’s  Gitanjali Gems . The summons sent to both Kocchar and Sharma requests them to appear in person or send a representative. Almost 31 banks are a part of a consortium which had given Rs 5,280 crore working capital facility extended to Choksi’s companies of which ICICI Bank is the lead lender. People in the know also indicated that the fraud office may soon summon other banks who are part of the consortium. Investigative agencies are probing all loans and facilities extended to  Mehul Choksi  and  Nirav Modi  and their associate companies in the Rs 12000 crore fraud which hit Punjab National Bank last month. Both Choksi and Modi have fled the country before the fraud emerged at the end of January. Now, Nirav Modi’s associa...

If from today you are not able to load fresh funds into your  mobile wallet , you can blame the  Reserve Bank  for it. In what could be a major impact on the  digital payments  industry, mobile wallets would be required to submit a full  KYC  for their users, without which the central bank would impose severe restrictions on its operations. While the  Payments Council of India , the industry body for the prepaid payments, made repeated appeals to the central bank to revoke the order and allow wallets till Rs 10,000 to operate without full KYC, the RBI said clearly that every payment instrument will have to abide by the KYC norms as they are also part of the extended banking ecosystem. "It will impact the Rs 12,000-crore industry in a major way and consumers will be severely impacted over the next few months, but we expect that in the long run it will be good for the overall ecosystem since wallets will get access to quality customers," sa...

To invest or not to invest - that is the question many of us have in our minds when it comes to cryptocurrencies at the moment. A lot of us are tip-toeing around the idea of investing in them but with all the uncertainty that surrounds them (both in terms of regulations and its legality) we remain cautious. Other than investing in an unregulated space and the potential risk of losing your money by falling prey to a ponzi scheme, you have more reasons to stay away from such investments. Here are six more reasons why you should stay away from cryptocurrencies (well, at leastuntithere is more clarity) 1. Banks have started stopping purchase of cryptocurrency with their cards Recently, Citibank in an email notification to its customers has said that its credit and debit cards cannot be used to purchase cryptocurrencies. Following this, SBI Card has also cautioned customers against risks associated with  bitcoin  and other crypto-currencies and is in d...