Five fascinating business facts – Part 10

$2bn

As India’s richest men hit their 60s and beyond, succession questions about the next generation of tycoons will increasingly emerge in a country where business is still dominated by family-run enterprises.

Bloomberg has profiled some of these young guns of corporate India, selecting those who are 35 and under, based in India, have a public profile, and whose billionaire fathers are valued at more than $2 billion.

They include Isha and Akash, the 25-year-old, twin brother-and-sister scions of India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. They’re being groomed as the future of Reliance Industries Ltd., their father’s $42 billion conglomerate, as the company diversifies beyond energy and refineries into consumer-facing businesses.

The re is also the only daughter of technology billionaire Shiv Nadar, 34-year-old Roshni, chief executive officer and executive director of HCL Corp., the $7 billion holding firm for a group that includes listed HCL Technologies Ltd. and HCL Infosystems Ltd. Roshni returned to India in 2008 after a stint as a news producer at Sky News U.K.

12%

In Nigeria, the banks are doing better than many know or are willing to admit. Pitting Nigeria and Kenya’s biggest banks by market value against each other shows just how much state intervention hurt Nairobi-based Equity Group Holdings Ltd., while Guaranty Trust Bank Plc in Lagos fended off a contracting economy by benefiting from a weaker local currency. Equity has just reported its first ever drop in annual profit as non-performing loans soar and Kenya’s 11 publicly traded lenders have declined an average of 12 percent since Aug. 24, when the rate caps were announced by government, with Equity Group sliding 17 percent..

While investors still remain negative toward Nigeria because of a lack of foreign exchange that is curbing growth in the West African country, lenders here are reorganizing bad debts, absorbing currency fluctuations and diversifying away from loans to the oil and gas industry following a more than halving in crude prices since mid-2014.

“Nigerian banks appear to be navigating current challenges better than anticipated,” said Aleksej Gren, a fixed-income analyst at Exotix Partners LLP in London. “Banks are prepared for naira weakness. Further asset quality deterioration is likely, but many of the problems have already been identified.”

$7.25bn

German software maker SAP SE plans to capitalize on the Trump administration’s efforts to encourage the repatriation of cash held by U.S. companies overseas, which could set the stage for spending by businesses on large-scale software upgrades.

“If a large company repatriated cash and wanted to put it to work, software projects would be an obvious choice,” SAP Chief Executive Officer Bill McDermott said in an interview.

Business from the U.S. made up about 31 percent of SAP’s fourth-quarter revenue of 6.72 billion euros ($7.25 billion), and about one-quarter of its 84,000 employees are U.S. based. Coupled with any incentives that might emerge for infrastructure spending, a tax break for repatriation of overseas profits may offer sizeable benefits for SAP, McDermott said, along with other software companies.

$62.4bn

If Britain wants out of the European Union, it should be prepared to pay.

That’s the message that EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker delivered on Friday, telling the BBC that Britain will need to pay roughly £50 billion ($62.4 billion) as it leaves the EU.

The precise amount required, Juncker added, would be “scientifically calculated.”

Juncker’s opening offer comes just days before the official start of exit negotiations, a process that will be triggered by Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday.

6%

The UK is again hoping to persuade Qatar, which still retains a 6 per cent stake in Barclays, to open its coffers and is welcoming a delegation for an investment conference at the end of this month. Qatari investments top £35bn in the UK, according to the Qatar-UK Business and Investment Forum. That includes trophy assets such as the Shard, the 1,000ft tower that looms over the City of London, and iconic institutions such as Harrods and Claridge’s.