Luc Despins, a New York bankruptcy lawyer, typically took on difficult jobs: After the energy company Enron collapsed years ago, he helped thousands of victims recover some of their money. But when Mr. Despins was appointed by a bankruptcy court last year to locate the assets of Guo Wengui, a Chinese property mogul and political provocateur who had failed to repay tens of millions of dollars to a hedge fund, the assignment presented very different challenges, the New York Times reported. In November, protesters appeared outside his home and that of his ex-wife.
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Scott’s Refrigerated Logistics may have been insolvent nine months before its collapse, according to the company’s administrators McGrathNicol, the Financial Review reported. The Anchorage Capital Partners-owned transportation group – one of the largest in the country and a key supplier to retailers including Coles, Aldi and IGA – collapsed in late February. In a report lodged with the corporate regulator, McGrathNicol said it was also possible the company had been insolvent, on a cash flow basis, only a week before they were called in.
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Japan's JOLED, a company formed in a 2015 merger of the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) businesses of Panasonic and Sony, said on Monday that it had filed for bankruptcy protection at the Tokyo District Court, Nikkei Asia reported. JOLED has total liabilities of 33.7 billion yen ($257 million). JOLED's troubles are part of the long decline of Japan's display industry, which has undergone repeated realignments to try to compete with South Korean and Chinese rivals.
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U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled a new indictment against Sam Bankman-Fried, accusing the founder of now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange of conspiring to pay a $40 million bribe to Chinese government officials, Reuters reported. The new bribery conspiracy charge adds the pressure on the 31-year-old former billionaire, who now faces a 13-count indictment over the November collapse of FTX.
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The Turkish central bank has so tightened its grip over the foreign-exchange market in the runup to May’s presidential election that it’s become the matchmaker for most large transactions, according to several traders who spoke on condition of anonymity. Nearly every trade larger than a few million dollars is subject to its scrutiny and approval, they said, Bloomberg News reported. The traders describe a central bank that’s constantly on the phone with banks, that tracks and vets prices as soon as bids appear on trading platforms, and demands detailed reports on currency operations.
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China spent $240 billion bailing out 22 developing countries between 2008 and 2021, with the amount soaring in recent years as more have struggled to repay loans spent building "Belt and Road" infrastructure, a study published on Tuesday showed, Reuters reported. Almost 80% of the lending was made between 2016 and 2021, mainly to middle-income countries including Argentina, Mongolia and Pakistan, according to the report by researchers from the World Bank, Harvard Kennedy School, AidData and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
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Only 15 percent of the 267 insolvency cases admitted in company law tribunals during October-December 2022 reached resolution with overall recovery of just 27 per cent of claimed amount, the IBBI data showed, the Economic Times of India reported. As much as 45 per cent cases were concluded through liquidation, according to a Kotak Securities analysis of the latest data from the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI).
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Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun is attempting to revive the fortunes of digital-assets exchange Huobi by shifting its focus back to China—with the aid of a digital citizenship program from a tiny Caribbean island, the Wall Street Journal reported. Sun is pushing the Beijing-founded company to win customers in Hong Kong and China, despite a ban on crypto trading in the mainland that forced Huobi to stop accepting business from there.
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China Evergrande Group, the giant property developer that defaulted on its U.S. dollar bonds more than a year ago, has struck a crucial deal with a group of bondholders, bringing its prolonged debt negotiations close to the finish line, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Guangzhou-based developer became the highest profile victim of the Chinese government’s deleveraging campaign more than two years ago, which fueled a sharp slowdown in the property sector and ultimately led to dozens of dollar bond defaults.
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