Headlines

Creditors have been able to recover nearly half their claims under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) when the resolution has been completed within the 330-day deadline, but delays lowered the proportion of money they got back, The Economic Times reported. Creditors recovered as much as 49% of claims when the IBC process was finished on time, but this dropped to 26% when it took 600 days or more, according to Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) data. The IBC was introduced eight years ago, in May 2016.

Switzerland’s approach to winding down a globally systemic bank such as UBS Group AG has features that could worsen the turmoil in a hypothetical future crisis, according to a key architect of global financial rules, Bloomberg reported. The country’s “Too-Big-to-Fail” regime is too focused on preserving local activities in the event of a break-up, said Paul Tucker, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England and a current research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

China’s property slump has weighed heavily on land sales, drying up a key source of revenue for local governments. Now, authorities are looking at an unconventional way to fill up their coffers: data monetization, The Wall Street Journal reported. The protracted property downturn has hit local governments hard, with many struggling under huge piles of debt. What they also have a lot of is data, such as traffic figures showing how many cars are on the roads and in parking lots.

The Vanuatu government is currently working with liquidators to work out a plan in which the remote South Pacific nation would not be left without an airline after its flagship carrier Air Vanuatu amassed large debts and had to suddenly declare bankruptcy, The Street reported. Travelers looking to get home were left stranded after the airline suddenly canceled all international flights off the island.

The eurozone’s unemployment rate fell to a record low in April, a sign that the job market is stronger than the European Central Bank had anticipated as it prepares to cut its key rate next week, The Wall Street Journal reported. The unemployment rate across the 20-nation bloc ticked down to 6.4% from the 6.5%, where it had been since November last year, the European Union’s statistics agency said Thursday. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal expected the rate to hold steady. The number of unemployed workers fell by around 100,000 from March, Eurostat said.

Scandinavian airline SAS posted a second-quarter pretax loss that more than doubled from a year earlier on Thursday, while pledging to complete its restructuring this summer, Reuters reported. The company's chapter 11 plan of reorganization was approved in March. It filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection in 2022 after years of struggle with high costs coupled with low customer demand, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. "We look forward to emerging as a competitive and financially stronger airline with a stable equity structure," CEO Anko van der Werff said in a statement.

Taiwan expects to triple its economic growth rate this year as strong demand for new technology such as artificial intelligence boosts the island’s exports, The Wall Street Journal reported. The economy expanded at a rapid 6.56% in the first three months of the year, outpacing most of its peers, according to official data. That was up from the 6.51% growth estimated in April. Thursday’s release confirmed that Taiwan’s economy is off to a strong start this year, as economists had widely expected.

Creditors of Brazilian electric utility Light on Wednesday approved the firm's restructuring plan, which includes a capital injection of up to 1.5 billion reais ($288.33 million), the company said, Reuters reported. Light, which operates Rio de Janeiro's power service, filed for bankruptcy last year, with its debt totaling 11 billion reais. As part of the proposed restructuring, Light would receive up to 1.5 billion reais in capital, including 1 billion reais from its reference shareholders, the trio of businessmen Nelson Tanure, Ronaldo Cezar Coelho and Carlos Alberto Sicupira.

Foreigners pulled money out of their emerging market portfolios in April on concerns of a tighter monetary policy path in the U.S., with outflows from stocks in India and Indonesia leading the way, data from a banking trade group showed, Reuters reported. The Institute of International Finance data showed net non-resident portfolio flows for April came in at -$0.7 billion, the first monthly outflow since October. The figure compares with net inflows of $30.2 billion in March and a $16.3 billion inflow in April 2023, the IIF data show.

French President Emmanuel Macron personally intervened to persuade Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to give Airbus and other aerospace firms relief from sanctions on Russian titanium, according to three people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported. The sensitive request was made during a phone call between the two leaders in March, weeks after Canada broke ranks with allies and slapped sanctions on the strategic metal, alarming France-based Airbus and others that still rely on Russian supplies in plants located in Canada or elsewhere.