Russia’s VTB Capital-led Numetal Mauritius Pvt Ltd. today told the company law appellate tribunal that it has offered over Rs 37,000 crore for Essar Steel Ltd. in the second round of bidding, Bloomberg Quint reported. The second round should be opened and the highest bidder selected from it, Numetal told the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal. ArcelorMittal, the only other bidder to have put in a bid for Essar Steel in the first round in February, however, opposed the opening of the second round of bids and sought only the first round of bids to be considered.

Creditor J&T Private Investments (JTPI) said on Thursday it had taken over shareholder rights and installed crisis management at CEFC Europe, the Czech-based part of troubled Chinese conglomerate CEFC China Energy, Reuters reported. The move is a sign of fresh woes for CEFC Europe which bought Czech assets from real estate to breweries, an engineering firm, an airline and a football club, under an investment drive promoted by Czech President Milos Zeman. CEFC Europe protested against the move, saying it had the money ready to cover the debt.

Australia’s unemployment rate edged up to a 9-month high in April, despite an increase in the number of full-time roles, the Financial Times reported. Australia’s unemployment rate rose to seasonally-adjusted 5.6 per cent in April from 5.5 per cent in the previous month, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That was above the 5.5 per cent forecast in a Reuters poll and broke from a four-month run at the same level.

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s prospects for bailing out his younger brother’s phone company are fading after an Indian tribunal put his sibling’s Reliance Communications Ltd. into insolvency proceedings, which prohibit “connected persons” from acquiring assets of delinquent borrowers, Bloomberg News reported. Ambani is India’s richest man and the founder of upstart rival Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., which had agreed in December to pay about $3.7 billion for airwaves, towers and fiber assets of the company known as RCom.

Just seven years ago, Noble Group was an $11 billion-plus Asian commodity powerhouse, trading everything from soybeans to oil. Now it's worth barely $80 million, rooted among Singapore's penny stocks, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Noble has posted huge losses provoked by a lack of trade financing and market calls that went sour, while also whittling down a mountain of debt. On Tuesday, it reported a narrower first-quarter loss than a year ago, although saying its performance was still beset by constraints on liquidity and trade finance.

India’s bankruptcy court on Tuesday admitted an insolvency plea filed by Sweden’s Ericsson against Reliance Communications, potentially delaying the Indian firm’s plans to sell assets to lighten its debt load, Reuters reported. Ericsson, which signed a seven-year deal in 2014 to operate and manage Reliance Communications’ nationwide telecoms network, is seeking 11.55 billion rupees ($170 million) from the company and two of its subsidiaries.

Fitch Ratings has upgraded its rating for Vietnam, noting the country’s improving track record on economic policy, debt and reform, the Financial Times reported. The rating agency said Vietnam’s long-term foreign-currency issuer default rating has been upgraded to BB with a stable outlook, from BB-, and that it expected Vietnam to remain among the fastest-growing economies in the Asia-Pacific region. “Vietnam's track record of policy-making focused on strong macroeconomic performance has been improving,” the agency said, adding that growth of 6.7 per cent is expected this ye

Enron Corp. is long gone, but the scandal it left behind in India has beguiled the country’s lenders for almost two decades, Bloomberg News reported in a commentary. However, if the bankers who financed the U.S. energy company’s unviable power plant in Maharashtra state aren’t ruing that 2,000-megawatt debacle any more, it’s only because they’re now staring at a mess 20 times bigger. India’s total electricity-generation ability is 344,000 megawatts, a 72 percent increase over six years. The country, notorious for its outages, still doesn’t have a power surplus.

Vedanta on Monday said it had received the go-ahead from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to acquire bankrupt Electrosteel Steels, Business Standard reported. “Vedanta (the company) has received the approval from the CCI for the application made by it for the acquisition of Electrosteel Steels,” the Indian unit of Vedanta Resources said in a filing to the BSE. In a tweet, the CCI said it found “no Appreciable Adverse Effect on Competition (AAEC) in respect of proposed acquisition of Electrosteel Steels by Vedanta”.

Disenchanted by the long-drawn-out proceedings for insolvency resolution cases filed against large borrowers that have failed to repay loans, many banks are planning to approach the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) for some succour, The Hindu Business Line reported.