Asia Pacific

Indian payments services firm AGS Transact Technologies said on Saturday that a creditor plans to initiate insolvency proceedings against the company for non-payment of dues, Reuters reported. Maxwel Aircon India Private Limited, an operational creditor of the company, has alleged default in repayments and sought an initiation of corporate insolvency in the National Company Law Tribunal, AGS Transact said in an exchange filing. Maxwel Aircon did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

A top official of Indian tech firm Byju’s violated his fiduciary duty to lenders by wrongly hiding $533 million from them, according to a US court ruling on Friday, a win for creditors vying to collect on a defaulted $1.2 billion loan, Bloomberg News reported. Byju’s fraudulently transferred at least part of the money to a small hedge fund based in Miami to keep it out of lenders’ hands, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey also ruled.

Amidst robust growth of electric two-wheelers, India’s first electric scooter maker Hero Electric is up for insolvency resolution under IBC (Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code), with the resolution professional (RP) inviting prospective bidders for the now bankrupt company, the Economic Times of India reported. The Expression of Interest (EOI) from prospective bidders for the company was floated on February 18 and is set to close on March 14, 2025. The RP will thereafter issue the final list of prospective resolution applicants on April 8.

Country Garden has again engaged Houlihan Lokey and China International Capital Corporation as financial advisers on its offshore debt restructuring, Bloomberg News reported. The defaulted property giant had previously hired Houlihan and CICC in 2023, but later parted ways. The advisory relationship with Houlihan was discontinued partly due to costs. Country Garden then appointed KPMG Advisory to the role in January 2024. Country Garden, which defaulted on dollar debt in 2023, has struggled to secure broad support for its restructuring.

Company executives and foreign officials are scrambling to avert the consequences of another tight deadline from President Trump, who has threatened to put stiff tariffs on goods coming in from China, Canada and Mexico starting just after midnight Tuesday. The president describes this as an effort to pressure those countries to stop the flow of deadly drugs and migrants to the United States. But Mr.

A private gauge showed China’s manufacturing activity expanding at the fastest pace in three months, signaling a trend of improvement consistent with the official index, the Wall Street Journal reported. The China Caixin manufacturing purchasing managers index rose to 50.8 in February from 50.1 in January, according to data released Monday by Caixin Media Co. and S&P Global. It was the fifth consecutive month that the index stayed above 50, the threshold separating expansion from contraction.

Core consumer prices in Japan's capital rose 2.2% in February from a year earlier, data showed on Friday, slowing for the first time in four months due to revived energy subsidies but remaining well above the central bank's 2% target, Reuters reported. The persistently high inflation will likely support the case for the central bank to continue its monetary policy tightening campaign.

India’s economy picked up in the most recent quarter as manufacturing and government spending regained momentum, Bloomberg News reported. The world’s fifth-largest economy grew 6.2% from a year earlier in the October-December quarter, according to provisional figures issued by the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation on Friday. The print was higher than the previous quarter’s revised figure of a 5.6% expansion.

China's factory activity likely contracted for a second month in February, keeping alive calls for even more stimulus to prop up depressed domestic demand in the world's second-largest economy as manufacturers brace for fresh U.S. tariffs, Reuters reported. A Reuters poll of 21 economists forecast the official purchasing managers' index (PMI) will come in at 49.9, up from January's 49.1 but still below the 50-point threshold that separates growth from contraction in activity.

China's banks are cutting the interest rates offered on U.S. dollar deposits after being asked to do so by the central bank, possibly to curtail dollar hoarding and also prop up a weakening yuan, Reuters reported. Mainland retail investors and exporters have built up nearly a trillion dollars worth of deposits because of higher U.S. yields and the yuan's slide. Two banking sources with direct knowledge of the matter said that banks across China, big and small, have over the past few weeks been told by the People's Bank of China (PBOC) they have to cut dollar deposit rates.