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<keyword id="19955404" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="finance" source="keywords">Finance</keyword> Minister <keyword id="19916618" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="nirmala-sitharaman" source="keywords">Nirmala Sitharaman</keyword> presented the Union <keyword id="19936553" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="budget" source="keywords">Budget</keyword> 2024-25 on Tuesday, outlining a detailed financial roadmap aimed at driving economic growth and ensuring fiscal stability. The budget reveals a comprehensive picture of government revenues and expenditures, highlighting major <keyword id="20439675" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="allocations" source="keywords">allocations</keyword> to key <keyword id="20353247" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="sectors" source="keywords">sectors</keyword> and <keyword id="19915334" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="schemes" source="keywords">schemes</keyword>. The <keyword id="19945274" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="revenue" source="keywords">revenue</keyword> to the government is generated from multiple sectors. Income tax contributes 19 per cent, borrowings and liabilities stand as the largest source at 27 per cent, and <keyword id="19951327" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="gst" source="keywords">GST</keyword> along with other taxes accounts for 18 per cent. Corporation taxes contribute 17 per cent, followed by non-tax receipts at 9 per cent, customs at 4 per cent, excise duty at 5 per cent, and non-debt capital receipts at 1 per cent. On the <keyword id="19936655" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="expenditure" source="keywords">expenditure</keyword> side, the budget outlines significant allocations to various public sectors. Interest payments consume 19 per cent of the total expenditure, central sector schemes account for 16 per cent, and states' tax devolution takes up 21 per cent. Subsidies represent 6 per cent of the spending, while defence expenditures stand at 8 per cent. The Finance Commission and other transfers take up 9 per cent, centrally sponsored schemes another 8 per cent, pensions 4 per cent, and other expenses 9 per cent. In terms of sector-specific allocations, defence receives the highest allocation at Rs 4,54,773 crore. Rural development is allocated Rs 2,65,808 crore, reflecting the government's focus on boosting rural economies. Agriculture is set to receive Rs 1,51,851 crore, while home affairs are allocated Rs 1,50,983 crore, underscoring the importance of internal security. Education, a critical sector for future growth, is allocated Rs 1,25,638 crore. The IT and Telecom sector, pivotal for digital transformation, receives Rs 1,16,342 crore. Health is allocated Rs 89,287 crore, emphasising the ongoing commitment to improving healthcare infrastructure. The energy sector is earmarked Rs 68,769 crore, social welfare Rs 56,501 crore, and commerce and industry Rs 47,559 crore. The budget also highlights significant increases in allocations to major schemes. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) sees an increase from Rs 60,000 crore in FY23-24 to Rs 86,000 crore in FY24-25, aimed at enhancing rural employment. Nuclear power projects receive a boost from Rs 442 crore to Rs 2,228 crore, while the development of semiconductors sees a substantial increase from Rs 3,000 crore to Rs 6,900 crore, underscoring the push towards technological advancement. Direct Benefit Transfer for LPG is allocated Rs 1,500 crore, up from Rs 180 crore, to support energy access. Solar power allocation doubles from Rs 4,970 crore to Rs 10,000 crore, reflecting the government's commitment to renewable energy. This budget, with its detailed allocations and revenue plans, underscores the government's strategy to foster economic resilience, technological advancement, and sustainable growth.

Fund allocations to key sectors and schemes hiked in budget

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Russia almost tripled its defense spending to finance its invasion of Ukraine.</li><li>Defense firms are busy — but high inflation and interest rates past 20% have left them struggling.</li></ul>In Russia's defense sector, demand is surging — but its companies are struggling all the same.The Kremlin is seeking ever more weapons for its attack on Ukraine.But sky-high interest rates are leaving companies struggling to turn a profit, a prominent CEO recently said.Sergei Chemezov, CEO of the defense conglomerate Rostec, sounded the alarm in an address to Russian senators in late October.He <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.rbc.ru/economics/23/10/2024/6718c36a9a79476b774f1989">said</a> "record" interest rates were "eating up" the profit from its orders.<h2 id="f760578d-7185-4150-bf09-fde6f3d70c06">Debt trap</h2>He said clients tended to pay 30%-40% of an order's value in advance, leaving the firm to borrow the rest.That debt, he said, was so expensive that it canceled out any profit on the work."If we continue to work like this, then most of our enterprises will go bankrupt," he said.A few days after he spoke, Russia's central bank <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-central-bank-raises-key-interest-rate-to-21-2024-10">hiked its main interest rate further still</a>, from 19% to 21%.Rostec is not alone in its predicament, economic analysts told Business Insider.Rising interest rates and export bans were eroding Russian defense companies' profits across the board, they said, making the Russian state the only guarantor of revenues.<h2 id="b9ad0c28-486e-4588-b4c2-4b027ca1e40d">Sustaining the war machine</h2>Since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine about two and a half years ago, the Kremlin has taken a slew of measures to keep its defense sector pumping out tanks, ammunition, drones, and missiles.It restructured its economy to prioritize the war, imposed export bans, tapped its national wealth fund, and strengthened trade with non-Western countries.Its defense budget soared, from $59 billion in 2022 to $109 billion in 2023.It's heading for an <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.sipri.org/media/newsletter/2023-december">estimated $140 billion</a> in 2024, with a draft budget forecasting $145 billion for 2025.That figure would represent 6.3% of Russian GDP, the highest share since Soviet times.That spending has consequences, said Roman Sheremeta, an associate professor of economics at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University."The government pumped enormous sums of money to support the war efforts," he told Business Insider. "And the Russian reserves have been almost depleted."The liquid assets of Russia's national wealth fund dropped by almost half, from 8.9 trillion rubles (about $91 billion) before the war to 5 trillion rubles (about $51 billion) at the end of last year, Bloomberg <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-17/war-in-ukraine-drains-nearly-half-of-accessible-russian-reserves">reported</a> in January, citing Finance Ministry data."The Kremlin cannot afford defense companies to go bankrupt," Sheremeta said.<h2 id="86664911-b4d8-4aec-ad9a-8c27b113bb7b">A 'death spiral'</h2>While huge defense expenditures have contributed to economic growth in Russia and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-ukraine-war-moscow-military-spending-currency-inflation-budget-2024-9">averted a recession</a>, they also fueled inflation.When it hiked the key interest rate to 21%, Russia's central bank said its mission was to tame inflation.In September, Russia's annual inflation rate rose to 8.6%, far above its 4% target.Sheremeta described the situation as a "death spiral," where war spending begets more inflation, which requires more war spending."What is even worse for those companies," he said of the defense firms, "is that they cannot export due to sanctions and sell their weapons for US dollars or Euros."Daniel Treisman, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, said Russia could end up with hyperinflation."As the budget deficit rises in the face of military costs, the need to cover part of it by printing money will drive prices ever higher, and the Central Bank will have to hike interest rates further to slow them," he said.<h2 id="2a236608-2617-4e7e-8687-d480f19dea32">A crisis point — but not yet</h2>The experts BI spoke to both said Russia could sustain its spending for a year or more before a crisis point.Some see even more runway.Iikka Korhonen, the head of research at the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies, said defense companies won't be allowed to go bankrupt, and would instead be restructured or bailed out.Russia has done that before, saving indebted defense firms in 2016 during an earlier financial crisis.If that doesn't fix the problem, "other sectors will be cut" to keep defense firms going, Korhonen said.Julian Cooper, Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies of the University of Birmingham, made similar remarks."If some defense companies cannot fulfill their obligations, the Kremlin can simply nationalize them," Sheremeta said.Konstantin Sonin, a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, forecast a dark economic future ahead for Russia due in part to "borrowing" funds from the future.In an <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-ukraine-war-outlook-moscow-sanctions-west-firms-uchicago-2024-10">op-ed</a> for Project Syndicate earlier this month, Sonin wrote that massive investment in military production at the expense of key public spending programs may strengthen Putin's hand in the short term."But it sets a time bomb under longer-term economic development," he wrote."Whenever the Ukraine war ends and Russia returns to international trade (beyond raw materials), all the nationalizations of recent years will come back to haunt it," he wrote.

Russia's defense sector is running on overdrive — but firms are warning of bankruptcy

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="20948500" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="Mira-Murati" source="keywords">Mira Murati</keyword> is leaving <keyword id="19918823" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="OpenAI" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="OpenAI" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="OpenAI">OpenAI</keyword>, causing shockwaves in the <keyword id="20790511" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="tech-sector" source="keywords">tech sector</keyword>.</li><li>Murati's departure follows a series of high-profile exits from OpenAI this year.</li></ul><a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mira-murati-openai-cto-leaving-executive-memo-staff-2024-9">Mira Murati announced on Wednesday</a> that she is leaving OpenAI, where she served as chief technology officer and interim CEO after <keyword id="19918827" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sam-Altman" source="keywords">Sam Altman</keyword> was briefly ousted in November. Her departure immediately set off shockwaves across the tech sector. <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-25/openai-cto-mira-murati-says-she-will-leave-the-company">Bloomberg reported</a> that employees used a "WTF" emoji in Slack in response to the news. There's also rampant speculation on X about why she is leaving — and where she'll end up next. And then, of course, there are the memes on social media, poking fun at the high-profile departures that have happened this year. One VC joked that OpenAI lacked a C-suite. Others pointed to a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://x.com/_thatstartupguy/status/1839037417912783194?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1839037417912783194%7Ctwgr%5Ef6eb4801b303d0ceadb67d0b3b6778b877e6d9a6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmuse.insider.com%2Fstory%2F66f48f0b69657a7deb4de735">2023 </a><a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/_thatstartupguy/status/1839037417912783194?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1839037417912783194%7Ctwgr%5Ef6eb4801b303d0ceadb67d0b3b6778b877e6d9a6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmuse.insider.com%2Fstory%2F66f48f0b69657a7deb4de735">Wired magazine cover</a> featuring CEO Altman, Murati, former chief scientist and cofounder Ilya Sutskever, and Greg Brockman, the company's president and cofounder. Wired, at the time, called the OpenAI execs the world's "AI overlords." Of the four, only Altman and Brockman are left at the company, and Brockman is on extended leave through the end of the year. Sutskever announced his departure from OpenAI in May and launched his own AI startup focused on safety. The snark on X, meanwhile, has reached critical mass. A few hours after Murati announced her departure, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-note-more-staff-exits-barret-bob-2024-9">two other OpenAi departures </a>were announced on X: Bob McGrew, the company's chief research officer, and Barret Zoph, the vice president of research. Left on the leadership team are CFO Sarah Friar; Chief Scientist Officer Jakub Pachocki, who replaced Sutskever: Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap; and Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil. Of the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.ft.com/content/638f67f7-5375-47fc-b3a7-af7c9e05b9e0">11 cofounders</a> of OpenAI from 2015, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/crew-of-10-helped-sam-altman-found-openai-dwindled-2-2024-8">only Altman, Brockman (who, again, is on leave), and Wojciech Zaremba remain</a>. One of the cofounders, Elon Musk, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. Musk dropped, then reopened the suit in August, saying he believed he was helping start a nonprofit and had been "deceived." OpenAI responded to the lawsuit, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-fightingwars-alot-of-fronts-2024-8">telling Business Insider</a> in an August statement: "As we said about Elon's initial legal filing, which was subsequently withdrawn, Elon's prior emails continue to speak for themselves." OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI on McGrew and Zoph's departures. The brain drain has also included other high-profile exits, including former researcher and head of alignment <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jan-leike-ilya-sutskever-resignations-superalignment-openai-superintelligence-safe-humanity-2024-5">Jan Leike</a>, who announced his resignation in May, shortly after Sutskever. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-safety-researchers-quit-superalignment-sam-altman-chatgpt-2024-5" target="_blank">Daniel Kokotajlo and William Saunders</a>, who worked on OpenAI's governance and safety teams, left in the first half of the year. Additionally, OpenAI cofounder John Schulman left in August to join OpenAI rival Anthropic — where Leike also landed. And another cofounder, Andrej Karpathy, left in February 2024. In August, Kokotajlo said that about <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-lost-nearly-half-agi-safety-team-ex-researcher-2024-8">half of the people focused on AI safety had left the company</a>. "It's not been like a coordinated thing," he told Fortune. "I think it's just people sort of individually giving up." OpenAI, which was founded in 2015, has been the dominant player in the AI race since the launch of ChatGPT in late November 2022. It has since launched more sophisticated versions of ChatGPT, its text-to-image model DALL-E, and GPT 4o. The startup also announced a voice assistant, a text-to-video model named Sora, and its <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-o1-product-name-strawberry-2024-9">most sophisticated AI model, o1</a>, which the startup said can reason. But rivals — including some OpenAI investors like Microsoft — are catching up. On Wednesday, Meta announced that Meta AI is on track to be "the most used AI assistant in the world." OpenAI's <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-mission-drift-for-profit-nonprofit-structure-investment-2024-9">latest funding round </a>— which would bring its valuation to $150 billion — is now nearly complete and could include investors like Apple and Nvidia, per <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-19/openai-to-decide-which-backers-to-let-into-6-5-billion-funding?embedded-checkout=true">Bloomberg</a>. And Altman, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/open-ai-sam-altman-equity-stake-valuation-private-nonprofit-9">according to Reuters</a> and Bloomberg, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/open-ai-sam-altman-equity-stake-valuation-private-nonprofit-9">could be in for a large payday</a> with a reported company restructuring that would shift the startup away from its current nonprofit status. Correction: September 26, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated when Daniel Kokotajlo and William Saunders left OpenAI. They left in the first half of this year, not last year.

The OpenAI talent exodus has become the joke of the moment in tech world

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Starboard Value has taken a $1 billion stake in drugmaker Pfizer.</li><li>The hedge fund, headed by Jeff Smith, has become one of the most feared activist investors.</li></ul>Pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer got a wake up call Sunday evening when one of Wall Street's most feared activist investors revealed a stake in the company.Starboard Value <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/starboard-activist-significant-stake-in-drugmaker-pfizer-2024-10">informed the drugmaker</a> it had taken a position in the firm valued at $1 billion.An activist's aims, whether that's pushing for breakup, M&amp;A, or cost reductions, vary depending on the target. Starboard's turnaround strategy is not yet clear, but Pfizer's share price and revenues have tumbled from the record highs achieved during the pandemic's heights, and Starboard, led by its 52-year-old cofounder Jeff Smith, has a long history of wielding minority stakes to extract board seats and profits from name-brand companies.Over the past decade, Smith has more than doubled the hedge fund's assets under management to $8.5 billion by taking on targets including Salesforce, Starbucks, and the owner of Olive Garden. In that time Starboard has gained a reputation for making life uncomfortable for — and sometimes jettisoning — executives and directors who resist his overtures for change.Pfizer, with a market cap north of $160 billion, is among the largest companies Starboard's Smith has ever targeted. Still, investors seemed to applaud news of its investments on Monday, sending Pfizer's stock up about 3% in morning trading, adding nearly $5 billion to the company's market cap.Moreover, Starboard has reportedly secured support from <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/activist-starboard-value-takes-1-billion-stake-in-pfizer-89591cb6?mod=hp_lead_pos4">former Pfizer executives</a> Ian Read and Frank D'Amelio for its campaign.Starboard has experience across the spectrum but is especially good at instilling discipline at the board level and "improving margins and cutting costs at companies that are bloated," said Ken Squire, the founder and president of 13D Monitor, a research firm specializing in shareholder activism.Starboard declined to comment.<h2 id="44e54273-f674-45fa-9c95-4d5153293525">Who is Jeff Smith?</h2>Investor activism has exploded in recent years. The 147 new campaigns globally in the first half of 2024 is a record, building on the all-time high 252 campaigns reached in 2023, according to a July report from investment bank Lazard.Starboard has become one of the most formidable names in the business, even if Smith hasn't yet reached the name recognition of activist investors like Paul Singer (Elliott Management), Carl Icahn (Icahn Enterprises), and Dan Loeb (Third Point Capital).Smith launched Starboard in 2011, spinning it out of a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cowen.com/news/ramius-announces-spin-off-of-value-and-opportunity-business/">small unit at Cowen Group</a> along with a couple of partners, including Peter Feld. Early targets included AOL, where Starboard lost a proxy battle but agitated for changes that boosted the company's stock by 250%, and Office Depot, where Starboard won three board seats, according to <a target="_blank" href="https://fortune.com/2014/12/03/starboard-capitals-jeff-smith-activist-investor-darden-restaurants/">a 2014 story in Fortune</a>.Starboard put corporate America on notice with its campaign in 2013 against Darden Restaurants, the owner of Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse, among other dining chains. With less than a 10% stake Smith replaced the entire 12-person board and assumed the role of chairman. By the time Smith stepped down in 2016, Darden <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/activists-reap-olive-garden-bounty-1459902161">stock had gained nearly 50%</a> and Starboard had accrued more than $500 million in profits.One of the hedge fund's greatest claims to fame involved its <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/activists-reap-olive-garden-bounty-1459902161">improvements to Olive Garden's breadsticks</a>, which Starboard predicted could save the company up to $5 million a year, according to a Wall Street Journal report from 2015.In 2022, Starboard took a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-profit-margins-starboard-value-turnaround-2023-8">stake in software giant Salesforce</a>, urging the company to cut costs and improve margins. The company's shares have nearly doubled in the two years since.<div type="image" title="Photo of Marc Benioff of Salesforce speaking on stage." height="1333" width="2000" msid="114027436" hostid="261" sizebytes="41886"></div>Starboard's record isn't without blemishes. Its campaign against meat <a target="_blank" href="https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/a-primer-on-starboard-the-activist-that-pushed-for-a-staples-office-depot-merger/">processor Smithfield Foods</a> in 2013 fizzled. The hedge fund <a target="_blank" href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/09/box-wins-proxy-board-battle-with-activist-">lost a proxy battle</a> with software maker Box in 2021. And in 2019 it dropped a bid to have Bristol-Myers Squibb scrap its merger with Celgene after failing to win over <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/29/starboard-drops-out-of-celgene-fight-as-proxy-firms-back-bristol-myers-bid.html">two major proxy advisory firms</a>.In total, Starboard has initiated 151 activist campaigns, which have generated an average return of 25%, according to data from 13D Monitor.<h2 id="fc0d4b73-d1a3-4a74-a386-7908a74761a7">Ignore at your peril</h2>More recently, the hedge fund has taken positions in dating app owner Match Group, software company Autodesk, and Starbucks.Squire said Smith has a reputation as intense but intelligent and candid. Starboard "can be friendly, but if they're ignored they can also be feared — and they can get tough."In August, Starbucks replaced its CEO amid a campaign from Starboard and Elliott Management.Given Smith's record of winning corporate concessions — or prying them away by force — Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla may be next in the hot seat. Bourla took over in 2019 and guided the drugmaker through the pandemic, boosting annual revenues to $100 billion in 2022 thanks to sales of its COVID-19 vaccine and the antiviral treatment Paxlovid.But missteps ensued. Pfizer misjudged future demand for COVID remedies, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/pfizer-drug-company-cost-cutting-2da7524d?mod=article_inline">according to a WSJ report</a>, and revenues cratered. It has since undertaken multibillion-dollar cost cutting campaigns.For its next act, Pfizer executives wagered heavily on cancer treatments. It shelled out $43 billion last year to acquire Seagen, a Washington-based biotech company focused on developing novel cancer medicines. It expects Seagen's products to yield $3.1 billion in revenue this year and $10 billion in annual revenues by 2030.Still, its share price has fallen more than 50% since reaching an all-time high in December 2021.Starboard's targets cut across industries, including 23 campaigns in the healthcare sector, according to 13D Monitor. Besides Bristol-Myers Squibb, other prior targets include CVS and medical records and technology company Cerner.Pfizer did not respond to a request for comment. <h4 id="cbcdd8ad-013b-426e-8431-6c2b54c6859d">Greatest hits</h4><ul><li>2012: Starboard is credited with spurring AOL CEO Tim Armstrong to sell assets, including the sale of 800 patents to Microsoft for $1.1 billion.</li><li>2013: Starboard secured three seats on the board of Office Depot, which later agreed to merge with Staples before the Federal Trade Commission blocked the merger, citing antitrust reasons.</li><li>2014: Starboard replaced the entire board of Darden Restaurants, owner of Olive Garden. By 2015, Starboard was widely credited with turning Darden Restaurants around in part by rethinking how Olive Garden served its iconic breadsticks.</li><li>2019: Jeff Smith is named chairman of the board of pizza chain Papa John's. He immediately expanded the board by bringing in two new independent directors.</li><li>2022: Starboard urged software giant Salesforce to cut costs and improve its margins. The stock has nearly doubled since Starboard acquired a stake.</li><li>2024: After facing pressure from Elliott Management and Starboard, Starbucks replaced its CEO.</li></ul>

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Fund allocations to key sectors and schemes hiked in budget

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Russia's defense sector is running on overdrive — but firms are warning of bankruptcy

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The OpenAI talent exodus has become the joke of the moment in tech world

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Meet Jeff Smith, the hedge-fund investor taking on Pfizer

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