Headlines

The most valuable startup in India’s history, a tech company with Silicon Valley cachet, a charismatic founder and visions of dominating the online-education business seemed sure to be one of the post-pandemic’s next big things. More importantly, Think & Learn Pvt — more widely known as Byju’s — was willing to pay handsomely to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars in the U.S. just as the world’s central banks were holding interest rates at next to nothing. So when JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley went to line up buyers for Byju’s debt in late 2021, orders poured in.

Economic growth, which surprisingly slumped to a seven-quarter low of 5.4% in the second quarter, is on a rebound as demand has regained momentum, though the stickiness in food inflation warrants careful monitoring, the latest RBI bulletin has said, the New Indian Express reported. The surprise deceleration of growth in the September quarter had led to a rash of downgrades and cat calls for rate cuts. The list of forecasters pegging lower-growth was led by the central bank itself.

A councillor has said the U.K. government needs to urgently help their authority with adult care costs, to avoid bankruptcy, BBC.com reported. Despite welcoming the government's plan for reform, Somerset councillor Sarah Wakefield, lead member for Adults Services, Housing and Homelessness, said she is concerned funding will take too long to arrive. The Liberal Democrat-led Somerset Council spends 70-80% of its whole budget on social care and education.

Retailers in the U.K. recorded a dispiriting December, with not even the Christmas and Black Friday shopping periods saving them from declining sales, the Wall Street Journal reported. U.K. retail sales volumes were 0.3% lower in December than in the prior month, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. The decline was driven by a poor month for food sales, which sank to their lowest level since 2013, with supermarkets particularly affected, according to ONS senior statistician Hannah Finselbach.

FSG Nobiskrug shipyards has received several offers from potential investors. These are industry-related companies from Germany, not financial investors, MarineLink.com reported. This was reported by the provisional insolvency administrators Dr Christoph Morgen and Hendrik Gittermann at an event in Rendsburg on 17 January. The occasion was the visit of Schleswig-Holstein's Prime Minister Daniel Guenther and State Minister of Economic Affairs Claus Ruhe Madsen to a staff meeting at the invitation of the workers’ union “IG Metall Rendsburg”.

The Bank of Canada says the bar for using exceptional monetary policy tools like quantitative easing and extraordinary forward guidance “should remain very high,” after reviewing its response to the Covid-19 pandemic to inform how it reacts to future crises, Bloomberg News reported. In a suite of documents released Friday, the central bank offered a wide-ranging review of its handling of the economic shock brought on by the novel coronavirus in early 2020. The report comes as US President-elect Donald Trump threatens tariffs that would likely tip Canada into a recession if enacted.

Britons are using buy-now, pay-later like never before to fund their lifestyles, Bloomberg News reported. This model, allowing customers to spread out payments without interest or credit checks, has become the darling of retailers and is drawing a growing menagerie of fintech companies. That’s increasing the competition and risks squeezing industry margins, just as the government gets ready to regulate the sector. Activity rose nearly a fifth to about $27 billion last year, putting it at 7.7% of the UK’s total e-commerce market, according to GlobalData Plc.

Defaulted Chinese builder Sino-Ocean Group Holding Ltd. is entering a London court Wednesday for a three-day hearing, looking to exercise a legal mechanism allowing a debtor to potentially complete restructuring without creditors’ full approval, Bloomberg News reported. Company representatives will press for a court sign-off on its restructuring proposal, centered on turning about $5.6 billion of debt into new debt and other types of securities paid to creditors. Many bondholders oppose the terms, and a group of them will tout their proposals that they consider to be more favorable payouts.

China Vanke Co.’s top executive was taken away by police and the Chinese property giant may be assumed by state authorities, the Economic Observer reported, Bloomberg News reported. A task force sent by the local government of Shenzhen, where the state-backed developer is based, has stepped in to run the company, according to the report. Vanke may be taken over or restructured, the report added. The Observer reported separately that Vanke Chief Executive Officer Zhu Jiusheng was taken by police. Zhu didn’t respond to calls seeking comment about the report.

Donald Trump kicked off a new era of Western economic rivalry with Beijing when he took office in 2017. As he prepares for his second term, China’s dominance of global manufacturing is greater than ever, the Wall Street Journal reported. China just posted a trade surplus with the rest of the world of almost $1 trillion for 2024, according to official data released this week.