Headlines

Germany will assume more than €600 million ($629 million) of debt that its development bank extended to Northvolt AB for the construction of a battery plant in the country, Bloomberg News reported. The federal government will this month reimburse lender KfW for the value of a convertible bond and related costs, a spokesman for the economy ministry said in an emailed response to questions from Bloomberg. Privately-held Northvolt filed for bankruptcy protection in the US last month after a desperate bid to secure rescue funding fell short.

Electric bus manufacturer Lion Electric Co. is temporarily laying off about 400 workers and halting operations at its Illinois factory to save cash after receiving a short-term lifeline from its lenders, Bloomberg News reported. The Saint-Jerome, Quebec-based company made the announcement after a Saturday deadline to meet its obligations to key creditors passed. The extensions until Dec. 16 apply to a credit agreement with a syndicate of lenders and a loan provided by the Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec and Finalta Capital Inc., Lion said in a statement Sunday.

Glas Trust, which represents a group of US entities that lent $1.2 billion to Byju's, on Monday questioned the maintainability of the Indian cricket board’s application to withdraw its insolvency petition against the cash-strapped edtech firm, the Economic Times of India reported. At the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), Glas Trust cited procedural lapses for seeking rejection of the application filed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

In China’s sluggish property market, the latest sales pitch isn’t marble countertops, but residency papers, the Wall Street Journal reported. In a bid to support the real-estate market, more than a dozen Chinese cities have rolled out plans that would give something akin to permanent residency to home buyers. The southern economic hub of Guangzhou recently joined the list, making it the first of China’s biggest, tier-one cities—which also include Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen—to do so.

Faced with a bruising price war in the fast growing but crowded domestic market for electric vehicles, Chinese automobile manufacturers are pressuring suppliers to deliver hefty cost cuts, the New York Times reported. China’s BYD, the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicles, asked a supplier to reduce its product prices by 10 percent starting next year, according to a company email that was apparently leaked and circulated widely on the internet in China.

China's factory activity expanded modestly for a second straight month in November, an official survey showed, adding to a string of recent data suggesting a blitz of stimulus is finally trickling through the world's second-largest economy just as Donald Trump ramps up his trade threats, Reuters reported. The National Bureau of Statistics purchasing managers' index (PMI) on Saturday rose to 50.3 - a seven-month high - from 50.1 in October, above the 50-mark separating growth from contraction and beating a median forecast of 50.2 in a Reuters poll.

South Africa’s State airline is being approached by banks keen to discuss lending the carrier money, aided by a turnaround in the company’s finances, interim Chief Executive Officer John Lamola said, Bloomberg News reported. South African Airways (SAA) needs to finance a growth strategy that envisages its fleet more than doubling to 43 planes over the next five years. The company is constrained from seeking funds from the government, which is limiting bailouts to state-owned enterprises as it focuses on stabilising the nation’s debt.

South Korea's export growth slowed for a fourth-straight month in November, to the weakest level in 14 months, as shipments to the United States and China fell amid tariff uncertainty, trade data showed on Sunday, Reuters reported. Exports out of Asia's fourth-largest economy rose 1.4% in November from a year earlier, after a gain of 4.6% in October, to $56.35 billion. It was the 14th-straight month exports rose in annual terms but the slowest rate for the sequence, also missing a median forecast of a 2.8% increase tipped in a Reuters poll of economists. Last month, U.S.

President Javier Milei is imposing a December deadline on Argentina’s first bid to sell a long list of state-run companies to the private sector, outlining how challenging it will be for the government to unload businesses, Bloomberg News reported. The privatizations are part of Milei’s aggressive austerity campaign that he symbolizes with a chainsaw. He doesn’t believe the government should run companies, and says repeatedly that “everything that can be privatized, we’re going to privatize.” Milei is hoping to sell off state-run railways, banks, an airline and much more.

Hundreds of Chinese investors who lost savings in the collapse of China Evergrande launched a coordinated campaign this month to press authorities for an update on the failed property developer, Reuters reported. In the previously unreported action, small groups of disgruntled investors turned up at three Shenzhen government offices in succession to ask for an update on an investigation launched more than a year ago, the people told Reuters. They said they hoped this method of applying pressure on officials would not be deemed as a form of unlawful public protest.