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.

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

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.

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.

Lakshadweep, a joint venture between Sudhir Valia-led Suraksha ARC and Dosti Realty, will look at “improving” its bid for Jaiprakash Infrastructure (JIL) if an opportunity is afforded to it, sources close to the development told FE. The firm has already conveyed its intent to the resolution professional and the lenders to the troubled real estate company, the sources added.

Argentina’s latest capitulation may have helped to keep Turkey out of the headlines in recent weeks but some believe the latter’s banking sector could ultimately provide the most dramatic fireworks, the Financial Times reported. When a country has loaded up on foreign currency-denominated debt, the last thing it wants to see is a plunge in its own currency. Unfortunately, Turkey has seen just that, with the lira slumping 12.6 per cent against the dollar since mid-February. A look at the country’s metrics is sobering.