Headlines

There are seven bidders, including a couple of Asset Reconstruction Companies who have expressed preliminary interest to take over the beleaguered eye care chain Vasan Eye, the Times of India reported. The last date for submission of early interest ended July 19. The NCLT appointed resolution professional had called for early interest for Vasan Eye Care. India’s largest eye care chain Dr Agarwal’s Eye and MGM Hospital’s promoter MK Rajagopalan, Dr GSK Velu’s MaxiVision are among the list of bidders. Dr Amar Agarwal and MK Rajagopalan did not wish to comment on the bid.

Mexico is considering using its share of recently-approved International Monetary Fund reserves, worth about $12 billion, to repay the country’s debts, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said, Bloomberg News reported. Although the funds add to the central bank reserves, Mexico has enough bandwidth to use them to pay down debt, Lopez Obrador said at a daily press conference Wednesday. “The reserves have grown a lot and they pay very little interest,” he said.

China Evergrande Group’s stock and bonds jumped Wednesday after the company said it’s in talks to sell stakes in two of its units, potentially injecting fresh funds into the cash-strapped property firm, Bloomberg News reported. The discussions involve “several independent third-party investors,” the company said in a statement to the Hong Kong exchange late Tuesday. Talks involve Evergrande stakes in its electric vehicle start-up and property services units.

The regulatory storm that washed billions from Chinese corporate valuations in the name of curbing excesses exposes not only the policy risk under President Xi Jinping's increasingly activist tenure, but also the uncertainty over implementation, Reuters reported. Xi's campaign to clamp down on industries ranging from internet platforms and bitcoin to ride-hailing giant Didi Global and tutoring marks a historic shift as he prioritises broad-based prosperity over the all-out growth pursued for decades by China.

Thyssenkrupp on Wednesday flagged a cash gap of up to 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) for its full year, citing restructuring costs and higher investments, as the German conglomerate continues efforts to streamline its businesses, Reuters reported. Shares of the steel-to-submarines group fell as much as 7.7% on the outlook for free cash flow before mergers and acquisitions, which is now expected to be a negative 1.2-1.5 billion euros in the year to September.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s Nigerian unit agreed to pay a community in the West African country more than $110 million to resolve a long-running dispute over an oil spill that occurred more than 50 years ago, Bloomberg News reported. The Anglo-Dutch energy giant will pay the Ejama-Ebubu people 45.7 billion naira ($110.9 million) in compensation to put an end to a legal case that began in 1991, the community’s lawyer Lucius Nwosu said by phone. Shell approached a court in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, on Wednesday to disclose the development, he said.

The number of corporate bankruptcies in Japan fell at the fastest rate this year to hit the lowest in 50 years for a July, thanks to funding support from the government and banks, a private-sector credit research firm said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. There were 476 company bankruptcies in July, down 40% from the same month a year ago, Tokyo Shoko Research showed, pointing to government help for corporate financing amid a resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two businesses have been closed down after submitting false documents to at least 41 local authorities and the government’s bounce back loan (BBL) scheme to secure £230,000 worth of emergency support during the pandemic, P2P Finance News reported. LV Distributions and SIO Traders were wound up in the high court during separate hearings on 27 July 2021 following enquiries conducted by the Insolvency Service, which proved neither company ever traded. Councils in Wiltshire, Herefordshire and Guildford were among those targeted.

The German government agreed Tuesday to provide 58 billion euros ($68 billion) to help rebuild regions hit by devastating floods last month, the Associated Press reported. Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of Germany’s 16 states approved the state flood aid package, which still needs parliament’s endorsement. “This is significantly more than we had for previous floods,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin. More than 180 people died in Germany and hundreds more were injured in the July 14-15 floods, which also claimed lives in neighboring Belgium.