Covid-19 drove tens of millions of migrant workers from cities back to their home villages, often to farm, and its lingering presence threatens India’s decadeslong quest to lift its economy from rural poverty to the modern age, the Wall Street Journal reported. In Covid-19’s first year, agriculture’s share of India’s total employment rose for the first time in at least 15 years, by 3 percentage points to 45.6%, government data show, yet it contributes less than a fifth of national output.

India's federal investigation agency has filed a police complaint against ABG Shipyard Ltd and its promoters accusing it of defrauding banks of 228.42 billion Indian rupees ($3.03 billion), Reuters reported. The report, posted on the Central Bureau of Investigation's website, said a forensic audit report it received from the banks two years ago had found instances of fraud in April 2012 and July 2017. The shipbuilder, identified by the central bank as one of India's "dirty dozen" highly indebted companies, has filed for bankruptcy resolution.

Australia concluded its quantitative easing program, leaving the Reserve Bank with more than 40% of government bonds on issue and raising questions about what it will do with the pile of assets, Bloomberg News reported. The RBA on Thursday conducted its final A$1.6 billion purchase of securities under a program that tripled its balance sheet to about A$650 billion ($465 billion). Indeed in 2021 it bought more than three times more debt than the government issued, the largest ratio across the world’s six largest developed bond markets.

China arrested a former senior official at the nation’s banking regulator over alleged bribery, adding to a long list of executives and policy makers caught up in the nation’s latest anti-graft crackdown, Bloomberg News reported. Cai Esheng, the former vice chairman at the banking watchdog who retired in 2013, also faces charges over the abuse of power, The Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the People’s Republic of China said on Thursday.

China Evergrande Group’s EGRNF 9.52% chief executive sold his holdings of company dollar bonds with a face value of $128 million last summer, stock exchange-filings showed, with the sales coming a few weeks before the property developer issued a profit warning, the Wall Street Journal reported. Evergrande CEO Xia Haijun, and Hui Ka Yan, the group’s founder and chairman, have in recent years bought sizable quantities of new bonds from the company, according to company statements and to earlier filings disclosing changes to their holdings.

A former Goldman Sachs banker charged with helping to embezzle hundreds of millions of dollars from Malaysia's 1MDB sovereign wealth fund will go on trial in the United States next week, in a case that could shed light on how the bank responded to warnings of corruption, Reuters reported. Roger Ng, Goldman's former investment banking chief in Malaysia, will be the first - and likely only - person to stand trial in the United States over one of the biggest financial scandals in Wall Street history.

More than 25,000 people died by suicide due to either unemployment or bankruptcy between 2018 and 2020, the Union home ministry told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, the Economic Times of India reported. A total of 3,548 people committed suicide due to unemployment in 2020 (when the first wave of Covid-19 hit), 2,851 in 2019 and 2,741 in 2018, Union minister of state for home Nityanand Rai said while replying to a written question. As many as 5,213 people committed suicide due to bankruptcy or indebtedness in 2020, 5,908 in 2019 and 4,970 in 2018.

The Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has directed the liquidator of Sterling Biotech to stay the auctioning process of the company until further orders, the Economic Times of India reported. The NCLT was hearing a petition filed by one of Sterling Biotech’s successful qualified bidders, India Gelatine and Chemicals Ltd. Gujarat-based Sterling Biotech is the world’s sixth-largest manufacturer of pharmaceutical gelatin and owes over Rs 8,100 crore to financial and operational creditors.

Some data-driven Chinese hedge funds have stumbled, after several years of eye-catching returns and surging inflows from investors, the Wall Street Journal reported. These quantitative fund managers use statistical models to select stocks and time trades, relying on machine-developed trading algorithms to filter out human weaknesses and find patterns in the market. The rise of Chinese quant investing mirrors earlier growth on Wall Street, with stock markets in both countries being large and liquid.

China eased a year-long cap on loans for the real estate sector to fund public rental housing, the latest bid by authorities to tackle a slumping property market, Bloomberg News reported. Bank loans to fund low-cost rental projects will no longer be subject to regulatory curbs, the People’s Bank of China said in a statement on Tuesday. The rules required banks to trim their loan exposure to the property sector to a certain level.