The insolvency resolution of Ruchi Soya under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) is likely to be completed on December 16, a source told CNBC-TV18. The dues of lenders to Ruchi Soya are also expected to be settled on the same day, the sources added. The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), in July, cleared Patanajali Ayurveda’s takeover of Ruchi Soya under the IBC, and approved its resolution plan in September, moneycontrol.com reported. Patanjali secured funds from the State Bank of India, Union Bank, Punjab National Bank, Syndicate Bank and Allahabad Bank before.

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Investors have warmed to Pakistan since the government secured a $6bn bailout from the IMF in July, removing any immediate threat of sovereign default, the Financial Times reported. MSCI’s Pakistan equities index is up more than a third from its August lows, compared with a gain of just over 10 per cent for MSCI’s flagship emerging market index. Foreign investors have made a tentative return to the country’s local debt market, buying $1.2bn of local currency government bonds since July after staying away for most of the past two years.

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Promoters of Essar Steel are not yet off the hook despite banks getting large parts of their dues back, The Times of India reported. The Lakshmi Mittal-owned metals group ArcelorMittal last weekend transferred over Rs 39,000 crore to lenders for the steel company he won after a legal battle that lasted over two years. Another Rs 2,500 crore will be repaid from the steel company’s internal accruals.

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Australia’s mid-year budget update showed economic reality is starting to bear down on the government’s finances, Bloomberg News reported. Treasury lowered its forecast surplus for the 12 months through June 2020 to A$5 billion ($3.4 billion) from April’s budget estimate of A$7.1 billion as it scaled back estimated tax revenues, according to the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook released in Canberra on Monday. It also predicted narrower surpluses for the following three fiscal years.
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The favored funding source of China’s real-estate developers is under scrutiny in one of the country’s largest urban areas, posing a threat to a sector that has stretched creative financing to its limits, the Wall Street Journal reported. On Friday, the city of Xi’an in central China opened a consultation process on instituting an escrow system that would ensure developers hold on to funds worth 1.2 times the cost of building a new property when booking a presale.

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China has made developing its own chip industry a matter of patriotic pride. It helps that “China chip” and “China heart” sound the same in the local language. The strain of this 1.7 trillion yuan ($243 billion) endeavor may be too much for the debt-clogged arteries of its municipal governments, though, according to a Bloomberg News commentary. Over the past decade, Beijing hasn’t hesitated to deploy its fiscal might in pursuit of economic and social objectives.
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Global automakers may face another potentially huge air-bag recall as the U.S. transport regulator evaluates the long-term safety of inflators made by bankrupt supplier Takata Corp., Bloomberg News reported. The manufacturer, now owned by China’s Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp., faces a Dec. 31 deadline to show the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that as many as 100 million inflators containing a chemical drying agent will be safe long-term.
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A commodity trader has become China’s first state-owned enterprise to inflict losses on dollar bondholders in two decades, according to S&P Global Ratings, a new landmark in a rising wave of defaults, the Wall Street Journal reported. Chinese authorities are allowing more companies to renege on their debts, where once they would have found ways to engineer bailouts. So far defaults have mostly been concentrated in credit-starved private companies, but even some groups with state backing are now failing to repay creditors as promised.

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Moody’s Investors Service said funding challenges at India’s non-bank financing companies are increasing the risk of asset quality deterioration at banks, which are already saddled with the world’s worst bad-debt pile, Bloomberg News reported. Risks of loan losses at shadow financiers will weaken their financials, prompting banks to further reduce lending to them and worsening their funding stress, the ratings company said in a report dated Friday.

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U.S. President Donald Trump signed off on a phase-one trade deal with China, averting the Dec. 15 introduction of a new wave of U.S. tariffs on about $160 billion of consumer goods from the Asian nation, Bloomberg News reported. The deal presented to Trump by trade advisers yesterday included a promise by the Chinese to buy more U.S. agricultural goods, according to the people. Officials also discussed possible reductions of existing duties on Chinese products, they said. The terms have been agreed but the legal text has not yet been finalized, the people said.
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