Headlines

Gokada, Nigeria’s largest-mile logistics delivery startup, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware in 2024, Tekedia.com reported. The filing highlighted significant financial difficulties, with liabilities exceeding $5.4 million against assets valued at just over $564,000. According to the court documents, Gokada principal assets include its 100% ownership in Gokada Rides limited, it’s Nigerian operational entity which it valued at $500,000, and $64,132.56 in cash held in a Silicon Valley bank account.

Country Garden has proposed a deal to its offshore creditors that will cut its debt by $11.6 billion, paving the way for the property developer to seek more time from the high court in Hong Kong to implement a restructuring plan, Reuters reported. The indebted developer has reached an understanding with a lender group made up of seven banks ahead of the company's liquidation hearing on Jan. 20 in Hong Kong, bringing it closer towards a restructuring of its offshore debt.

Greg Karpovsky, the founder of Stenn Technologies who was once feted by some of the biggest players on Wall Street, had suddenly gone quiet, Bloomberg News reported. Karpovsky said little on a Dec. 4 call with his 250-odd staff as they learned that his trade-finance business — valued at almost $1 billion just two years ago — had collapsed. He dialled in remotely, having left the UK just before Stenn’s British subsidiaries went into insolvency, people familiar with the matter said. On a call a week later, when most employees were made redundant, he didn’t appear at all.

Argentina paid international bondholders before a Thursday deadline, marking another step in President Javier Milei’s efforts to restore investors’ confidence in the serial defaulter, Bloomberg News reported. The government had some $4 billion worth of debt, between principal and interest payments, due on a slate of hard-currency notes. The payment included some $2.65 billion of credits issued under New York law in a 2020 restructuring. Finance Secretary Pablo Quirno said on a post on X Thursday morning that the government made its debt payments, without giving further details.

The European Central Bank should keep lowering borrowing costs at every meeting as long as the retreat in inflation matches its projections, according to Governing Council member Francois Villeroy de Galhau, Bloomberg News reported. Cuts should continue until the deposit rate — currently 3% — reaches a level that neither restricts nor stimulates the region’s 20-nation economy, the Bank of France chief said.

Eurozone retail trade inched up in November, although a slowing economy and low consumer confidence could upend a sustained revival ahead, the Wall Street Journal reported. The euro area’s retail-trade volumes rose marginally by 0.1% on month in November, the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat said Thursday. This flipped some of the 0.3% decline of October, but missed expectations of a better 0.3% increase from economists polled by The Wall Street Journal. October’s fall was the first drop since July.

Egyptian inflation slowed to its lowest level in two years, easing the path for the North African nation’s first interest-rate cut since 2020, Bloomberg News reported. Annual consumer prices in urban areas rose 24.1% in December versus 25.5% the month before, the state statistics agency CAPMAS said Thursday, marking a second consecutive month of slowing. It was its lowest since December 2022, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The monthly inflation rate eased to 0.2% from 0.5% in November.

German investment group Mutares SE & Co. said that its portfolio company Serneke Sverige AB has filed for bankruptcy in Sweden in the latest collapse of a builder in the biggest Nordic country, Bloomberg News reported. The filing at the Gothenburg District Court follows a “drastic financial deterioration during the second half of 2024,” according to a statement on Wednesday. The Swedish construction and real estate unit was agreed to be bought from Serneke Group AB in July last year and the transaction was completed in November.

Potential investors in Thames Water will have to submit new bids for the water utility by Feb. 10, Bloomberg News reported. The highly indebted company told bidders to take industry regulator Ofwat’s December ruling about the scope for bill increases and investor returns into account for their submissions. Thames Water has been looking to raise at least £3.3 billion ($4.1 billion) in new equity after its existing shareholders declared the business “uninvestible” and kicked off a formal bidding process.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Wednesday, reserved its order on the appeals by Glas Trust and Aditya Birla Finance to be added to the committee of creditors (CoC), as well as the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) application to withdraw its insolvency petition against the cash-strapped edtech firm Byju's, the Economic Times of India reported.