Country Garden Holdings Co.’s sales slump continued in February, as new home transactions saw only a tepid recovery across China and homebuyers shifted to state builders, Bloomberg News reported. Contracted sales dropped 38% from a year earlier to 2.3 billion yuan ($317 million), following a 59% year-on-year drop in January, Bloomberg calculations based on corporate filings show. Sales were little changed from the previous month. China is trying to put a floor under the real estate meltdown amid weak domestic demand and a worsening job situation.
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U.S. President Donald Trump's new 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada took effect on Tuesday, along with a doubling of duties on Chinese goods to 20%, sparking trade wars that could slam economic growth and lift prices for Americans still smarting from years of high inflation, Reuters reported. The tariff actions, which look set to upend nearly $2.2 trillion in annual U.S. trade with its top three trading partners, went live at 12:01 a.m. (0501 GMT).
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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.
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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.
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