Headlines

Volkswagen's truckmaker Scania said on Friday it had agreed to buy bankrupt Northvolt's division that makes battery packs for heavy industry, reviving a transaction first presented in February, for an undisclosed price, Reuters reported. Sweden's Northvolt filed for bankruptcy last month in one of the country's largest corporate failures, bringing to an end Europe's best hope of developing a rival to Asian electric vehicle battery makers.

When Indian education-technology company Byju’s was ordered last year to freeze over $500 million as part of a U.S. court battle with its lenders, it said the funds were safely within the business, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Byju’s by that time had already moved the half-billion dollars out of the U.S. through transactions involving a little-known hedge fund that were obscured in financial statements showing the cash sitting in its accounts, court records show.

Several businesses under the Sunterra banner, known in Alberta for its agriculture and high-end grocery operations, have taken steps toward creditor protection as three of its U.S. subsidiaries face legal and financial scrutiny, CBC.com reported. Late last month, Sunterra Quality Food Markets, Sunterra Food Corporation, Sunterra Farms, Trochu Meat Processors and Sunwold Farms all filed notices under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, a process that gives financially strained companies 30 days of protection from creditors while they come up with a plan to restructure.

Chinese property developer Country Garden said on Friday that it had reached an agreement with a key bondholder group and was close to finalising negotiations with a group of bank creditors, Reuters reported. The company defaulted on its offshore debt in late 2023 and is now in a restructuring process that aims to cut $14.1 billion of that debt by 78%. The restructuring support agreement with the key bondholder group holding 30% of the embattled developer's $10.3 billion existing offshore bond debt came ahead of a liquidation court hearing in Hong Kong on May 26.

Beijing increased its tariffs on U.S. imports to 125% on Friday, hitting back against President Donald Trump's decision to raise duties on Chinese goods and upping the stakes in a trade war that threatens to upend global supply chains, Reuters reported. U.S. stocks ended higher, capping a volatile week, as China's retaliation intensified global economic turmoil unleashed by Trump's tariffs. But the safe haven of gold hit a record high during the session, and benchmark U.S.

As the fallout from President Trump’s rewiring of global trade sets in across Europe, governments are putting in place billions of euros’ worth of “tariff shields” to protect their economies, companies and workers from uncertainty and the growing prospect of a recession, the New York Times reported. Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain announced more than 50 billion euros’ worth of financial support this week as businesses paused exports to the United States, warned of a hit to their finances and reckoned with putting employees on furlough.

Most of the Bank of Mexico's five governing board members agreed that the risks associated with U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs will add uncertainty to the future path of inflation, minutes of its March 27 monetary policy decision showed on Thursday, Reuters reported. Inflation forecasts remain uncertain, the board members noted in the minutes, adding that although the balance of risks for the trajectory of inflation remains biased to the upside, it has improved. "The changes in economic policy by the new U.S. administration have added uncertainty to the forecasts," the minutes noted.

The U.K. economy is growing more strongly than expected but U.S. President Trump’s barrage of tariff hikes and pauses threaten to stymie further acceleration ahead, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product increased by 0.5% in February, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed Friday. That was a better performance than the marginal growth economists had expected, and means the U.K. economy is very likely to record growth over the first quarter as a whole, barring an unexpectedly large reversal in March.

The World Bank is poised to announce a $12 billion financing package for Argentina on Friday, supplementing the International Monetary Fund's expected approval of a $20 billion Argentina loan deal, a source with knowledge of the plan said, Reuters reported. The Inter-American Development Bank also is expected to announce its own Argentina financing package, a second source said after Argentina's central bank announced on Friday that it will ease its foreign exchange market controls, allowing the peso to freely fluctuate within a moving band of between 1,000 and 1,400 pesos per dollar.

UBS Group Chair Colm Kelleher said Switzerland’s financial regulator and central bank set out additional capital requirements that would lead to a 50% increase compared with current levels, the Wall Street Journal reported. Swiss authorities have been working over the past year to reform of the country’s “too big to fail” banking laws in the wake of Credit Suisse’s rescue takeover by UBS, a move that is widely expected to result in higher capital demands for UBS.