Headlines

Toronto-based lithium battery recycling firm Li-Cycle said on Wednesday that it has filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada and expects to start a formal sale for its business or assets, Reuters reported. The firm's U.S. units have also commenced proceedings in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Li-Cycle has entered into a $10.5 million debtor-in-possession financing and a stalking-horse credit bid for at least $40 million with London-listed Glencore, its largest secured creditor.

State-owned Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency said on Wednesday that it has filed a bankruptcy application against Gensol Engineering marking the first instance of a creditor taking the embattled firm to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), Reuters reported. Gensol, a solar energy firm that also procured electric vehicles on behalf of ride-hailing service BluSmart, owes IREDA 5.10 billion rupees ($59.73 million).

A UK division of Sanjeev Gupta’s steel empire faces insolvency, after its parent withdrew a restructuring plan that was fiercely rejected by creditors, Bloomberg Law reported. Speciality Steel UK Ltd., an operator of plants in northern England, was unable to get creditors to agree to a plan to reduce its liabilities within an acceptable time frame ahead of a London court hearing on May 15, GFG Alliance said in a statement. The bulk of the business’s creditors relate to funding provided to Gupta’s GFG Alliance by Greensill Capital before it collapsed in 2021.

There was a 28% increase in the number of court approved Personal Insolvency Arrangements (PIAs) — the insolvency mechanism that address mortgage-related debt — during 2024, as the number of accounts in mortgage arrears “remains stubbornly high”, a new report by the Insolvency Service of Ireland has found, the Irish Examiner reported. The latest annual report from the ISI said there were 1,189 approved insolvency arrangements during 2024, of which 861 were PIAs — an increase from the 929 recorded in 2023, of which 671 were PIAs.

South Korea will double the deposit insurance limit to 100 million won (US$71,174 or RM307,643) per client from September, raising the cap for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century to boost confidence in the banking system, Bloomberg News reported. The change will partially affect money markets as consumers may move their funds to high-interest paying institutions, such as savings banks, from commercial banks, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) said in an emailed statement on Thursday.

India's unemployment rate among individuals aged 15 years and above stood at 5.1% in April, the country's ministry of statistics said in a statement on Thursday, Reuters reported. This is the first of what will be India's monthly labour force data reports, which will cover both urban and rural areas. Previously, the government published quarterly and annual employment statistics for urban and rural areas respectively. India's labour statistics have been criticised in the past for long delays and an unrealistic picture of the unemployment in the country.

The European Union is revising its proposals for a potential trade deal with the US as a first step toward opening serious negotiations, even as the Trump administration continues to provide little clarity and make demands that negotiators see as unrealistic, Bloomberg News reported. The new EU proposal would provide more details on ways to lower trade and non-tariff barriers, as well as boost European investments within the US and purchases of US goods, including liquefied natural gas and semiconductors for use in artificial intelligence.

The eurozone economy grew less rapidly than first estimated at the start of the year, despite a boost to factory output as American firms raced to stock up on imports ahead of the imposition of trade tariffs, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product was 0.3% higher across the 20 members of the eurozone in the quarter through March, according to figures released Thursday by EU statistics agency Eurostat. In a previous estimate, GDP was calculated to have grown 0.4%.

The European Central Bank hopes to have all the political decisions in place by early next year to issue a digital euro and would then need two to three years to launch the currency, ECB board member Piero Cipollone said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The ECB has been working on a digital version of the euro for years but progress has been slower than expected, mostly because legislation is still not in place to allow the bank to proceed. Financial upheaval in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election as the U.S. President has increased the urgency, however, as Europe relies on big U.S.

Europe's largest retailers and online retail companies have urged the European Commission to rein in allegedly high fees charged by Visa and Mastercard saying that they hurt the bloc's competitiveness and hamper rivals, Reuters reported. Visa and Mastercard dominate the market for payment cards and have in recent years faced complaints from retailers about their fees, and what retailers say is a lack of transparency on these fees. The two U.S. companies process about two-thirds of card payments in the euro zone.