IPO galore, Ratan Tata's demise, Adani indictment: The world of business in 2024

As the eventful 2024 draws to a close, it is time to look back on the many significant developments in the world of business which will go on to shape world economics for the second half of this decade.

In India, one of the major events was surely the passing away of Ratan Tata, the man behind many firsts on India’s way to becoming a global economic powerhouse. The RBI also got a new governor this year while a botched security update sent the world into chaos when Windows PCs across the world shut down globally!

The year in business was also not bereft of controversies, with the US filing charges against Adani Group Chairperson Gautam Adani for alleged bribery, opposition parties raising their voices against alleged conflict of interest by Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chief Madhabi Puri Buch, and an OpenAI whistleblower dying under mysterious circumstances.

Let us take a look at notable events in the world of business which made headlines in 2024:

Ratan Tata breathes his last

Ratan Tata

Ratan Tata’s demise on October 9 brought down the curtains on an eventful life which saw creation of the cheapest car in the planet to a takeover of the Land Rover and Jaguar subsidiaries from Ford.

Both business and political leaders, as well as people from all walks of life paid tributes to the tycoon whose contributions truly changed the landscape of India’s business.

IPO galore: Swiggy goes public; Hyundai creates a record

The Swiggy logo on the back of a delivery executive; A glimpse from Hyundai Motor India's IPO listing ceremony.

2024 was a great time for investors looking to land a sizable chunk of shares of companies going public. Food delivery company Swiggy launched its IPO on November 6. The IPO was initially priced at Rs 371 to Rs 390 per share, and was at around Rs 546 as markets closed on Friday, December 27.

Hyundai Motor India also launched its IPO this year, which was India’s biggest ever, as it raised $3.3 billion.

Mergers & acquisitions

Illustration shows Disney and Reliance logos.

2024 was witness to headline-grabbing business deals—some of which got through while others failed to put pen to paper. The most notable among them was the Reliance-Hotstar deal, which will see the merger of JioCinema and Disney Hotstar to create a streaming behemoth that can take the fight to the likes of Prime Video and Netflix.

32.72 per cent stake in India Cements, in July 2024, was acquired by UltraTech Cement in a Rs 3,954 crore deal which adds production capacity of 14.5 million tonnes to the latter.

Another notable merger came in the form of Vistara (originally owned by Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines) being merged with Air India on November 12.

A historic agreement which fell through was that of the Sony-Zee merger, which was valued at a whopping $10 billion. The deal did not materialise after Sony backed out.

Sensex, Nifty reach record highs; rupee hits historic low; MAGA-induced boost for Bitcoin

Image for representation.

The Indian stock market saw a boom this year, with benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty reaching record highs. Sensex hit 85978.25 while Nifty hit 26,004.15, both creating records in September.

The Indian rupee, on the other hand, hit a historic low when it reached 85.83 against the US dollar on December 27.

On the global front, cryptocurrency Bitcoin breached the $100,000-barrier after Donald Trump was elected the US President. Trump’s pro-cryptocurrency stance was behind this rally.

Gautam Adani gets indicted in the US

Gautam Adani

Indian billionaire and chairperson of the Adani Group, Gautam Adani, in December 2024, was indicted by the US government on charges of bribing officials of the Andhra Pradesh government to get undue favours.

Adani has denied the allegations, but the effect of this news was felt in New Delhi as the Opposition mounted up its accusations of a collusion between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the billionaire.

Hindenburg strikes again: This time SEBI chief in crosshairs

SEBI chief Madhabi Puri Buch

In 2023, the world of Indian business was struck by US-based short-seller Hindenburg’s Research’s accusations of stock price manipulation against the Adani Group. This year, Hindenburg decided to target Securities and Exchange Bureau of India (SEBI) chief, Madhabi Puri Buch.

Hindenburg has claimed that both Buch and her husband have stakes in offshore entities which invest in the Indian stock market. It further alleged that these were the same funds used by Adani’s brother Vinod to inflate the conglomerate’s shares artificially.

Buch was also accused by the Congress of earning rent from a company being investigated by the SEBI itself.

Nvidia creates history, albeit briefly

The logo of NVIDIA as seen at its corporate headquarters in Santa Clara, California.

Nvidia dethroned Apple as the world's most valuable company on October 25 following a record-setting rally in the stock, which was bolstered by demand for its specialised artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

Nvidia's stock market value briefly touched $3.53 trillion, slightly above Apple's $3.52 trillion, LSEG data showed.

In June, Nvidia briefly became the world's most valuable company before it was overtaken by Microsoft and Apple. The tech trio's market capitalisations have been neck-and-neck for several months.

However, Apple soon regained its position and is now looking to breach the $4-trillion mark.

Elon Musk—besides Bitcoin, another beneficiary of Trump’s win

Elon Musk.

The world’s richest man got richer and became the first person whose net worth crossed $400 billion. Stocks of Musk’s companies shot up after Trump’s win, and his personal wealth was further bolstered after SpaceX’s market capitalisation shot up to around $350 billion, nearly double of what it was in December 2023. Tesla stock, meanwhile, ballooned 70 per cent in 2024.

Notably, of Musk's entire wealth, $200 billion has been gained since Election Day in the US.

This was a year of mass layoffs

Image for representation.

Companies across the world, especially in the tech sector, laid off thousands of employees in 2024, with the approximate number being around 1.5 lakh, as per a Times of India report. Companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, and Tesla announced major cuts to their respective workforces this year.

The rise of AI, rising interest rates, and inflation are being seen as the major causes behind these layoffs.

Strikes at Samsung

The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at its office building in Seoul.

Consumer tech giant Samsung saw strikes at its South Korea factory as well as Tamil Nadu factories. In SK, the National Samsung Electronics Union went on strike in July to demand a wage increase. The company finally agreed to a deal with the union where workers would get a wage hike of 5.1 per cent along with more holidays and bonus points.

Back in India, a month-long strike by Samsung employees at its Tamil Nadu plant was called off on October 15 following extensive discussions between the representatives of workers, the state government and company management.

The strike was called to press for various demands which included wage revision, better work conditions, and registration of the newly-formed Samsung India Workers Union backed by Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) by the state labour department.

CrowdStrike makes it hard for Microsoft

The CrowdStrike logo

A faulty security update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike in July caused a global outage of Microsoft systems, which affected business across the world. Delta Air even sued CrowdStrike for the glitch that was responsible for mass flight disruptions.The outage had affected 85 lakh Microsoft systems across the globe.

Whistleblowers fall silent

OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji.

Boeing and OpenAI were mired in controversy this year after people who spoke up against their alleged malpractises were found dead under mysterious circumstances.

John Barnett, a longtime employee of Boeing, was found dead with a gunshot wound in his skull in March. He had filed a whistleblower complaint against the aircraft manufacturer with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Only two months later, another whistleblower, Joshua Dean, who was a former employee of Spirit AeroSystems, which manufactures crucial components for Boeing, also passed away. Despite his healthy lifestyle, Dean went to a hospital a couple of weeks before his death as he was having trouble breathing. Later, he developed pneumonia and a bacterial infection, and hence could not be saved.

Dean had complained to the FAA on “serious and gross misconduct by senior quality management of the 737 production line” at Spirit.

Suchir Balaji, an Indian-origin engineer, came into the limelight after publicly raising questions about the fairness of OpenAI's training methods for generative AI and its implications on copyrighted material. He was found dead in his apartment on November 26, and it was declared as a suicide almost two weeks later. Even Elon Musk has raised questions on Balaji’s death being declared a ‘suicide’.

Sam Altman: Back where he belongs

OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman

After his dramatic dismissal as the CEO of OpenAI at the end of 2023, Sam Altman, who is one of the company’s founders, got back with the company in 2024. After Altman was shown the door, Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO) offered him a job to lead the company’s AI division while hundreds of OpenAI employees wrote a letter to the company, threatening to leave if Altman was not reinstated.

OpenAI, on March 8, 2024, announced that Altman would return to the company.

RBI gets a new Governor

Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) new Governor Sanjay Malhotra poses for photographs after a press conference at the RBI headquarters, in Mumbai, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024.

Sanjay Malhotra joined the Reserve Bank of India as its governor on December 11, 2024 after having served the Government of India as its Revenue Secretary. Former RBI Guv Shaktikanta Das left office on December 10.

Malhotra has assumed office when there is a strong view within the government and the industrial and business establishment, and outside that the RBI should relax its position on policy rates to support growth.