Headlines

India has started an investigation into financing and accounting practices at Byju’s after a previous inspection found corporate governance lapses at the struggling online tutoring firm, Bloomberg News reported. The federal government has asked the regional office of the Registrar of Companies in Hyderabad to investigate Byju’s books to ascertain if the company misreported financial statements and whether funds were siphoned off. There were shortcomings in the accounts of Byju’s. They didn’t specify what those failings were. The registrar’s office has one year to submit its report.

Court advisers have billed nearly $30 million for a stalled auction of shares in a parent of Venezuela-owned oil refiner Citgo Petroleum, raising the ire of creditors that have waited years to get compensation, Reuters reported. Citgo, the crown jewel of Venezuela's overseas assets, sits at the center of a Delaware court auction in which 18 companies seek to collect up to $21.3 billion for debt defaults and expropriations in the South American country.

Sri Lanka is kicking off an exchange to swap $12.6 billion of its bonds for longer-dated notes as it seeks to complete its dollar-denominated debt restructuring, Bloomberg News reported. Investors in the country’s bonds can tender their holdings for new international bonds with a haircut ranging between 12 cents and 16 cents on the dollar, according to calculations made by Bloomberg and based on a statement sent to bondholders. A creditor committee holding about 40% of the bonds said in a separate press release it supports the offer.

Brazil’s inflation picked up much more than expected in early November, adding urgency to government plans to cut swelling public spending that is pushing cost-of-living increases above target, Bloomberg News reported. Official data released Tuesday showed consumer prices rose 4.77% from a year earlier, above all forecasts in a Bloomberg survey of economists that had a 4.64% median estimate. On the month, they increased 0.62%. Price pressures are building in Latin America’s largest economy, stoked by a historic drought and investor anxiety over growing government spending.

Germany is stuck in a period of economic weakness but central bank interest rates need to come down only gradually to make sure inflationary pressures are fully extinguished, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said on Monday, Reuters reported. The euro zone's biggest economy has been the bloc's laggard in recent years and the outlook is bleak as export demand is lacklustre, its oversized industry is in recession and consumers are proving too cautious, building up savings instead of spending cash buffers.

Donald Trump’s new tariff pledges send a clear signal that he wants to rewrite the terms of North America’s free-trade pact and follow through with plans to hit China with tariffs, demonstrating to allies and adversaries alike that he is serious about renewing confrontation over a global trading system that he believes costs the U.S. dearly, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Denmark’s plan to tax agriculture emissions will lead to rising impairment charges for some of the nation’s financial institutions but won’t threaten financial stability, the central bank in Copenhagen said, Bloomberg News reported. A few “medium-sized” banks are most exposed to a higher risk of losses from loans to farmers, who “already have a vulnerable economy and must pay the additional tax for their CO2 emissions,” Nationalbanken said in a financial stability report on Tuesday.

Annual U.K. shop-price deflation lost steam in November, driven by higher fresh-food prices on increased winter-related costs, while retailers’ additional costs next year suggest the end of falling inflation, a report said, the Wall Street Journal reported. Prices at U.K. stores decreased 0.6% on year in November, up from deflation of 0.8% recorded in the previous month, the report by NielsenIQ and the British Retail Consortium showed Tuesday. This is the first time in 17 consecutive months that inflation was higher than the previous month.

Advent International is considering reviving the sale of Dutch medical supplier Mediq as the private equity firm looks to cash out from the business, Bloomberg News reported. The US buyout firm is speaking to potential advisers and could seek a valuation of about €1 billion ($1.1 billion) for Utrecht-based Mediq, the people said. An auction process could be launched in the first half of next year, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. Deliberations are preliminary and Advent could still opt to keep the asset for longer, the people said.

For Northvolt AB, the Swedish startup that became a poster child for Europe’s electric-driving future, the route to collapse started in June when BMW AG canceled a multi-billion-dollar order, Bloomberg News reported. Back then, few saw the significance of the move, which effectively started a countdown that would culminate in a Chapter 11 filing less than six months later. Northvolt scrambled to keep the financing flowing, but as Germany’s car industry fell deeper into its own crisis, it became clear orders would dry up.