Headlines

India's upper house of parliament passed a new bankruptcy code on Wednesday, as the opposition swung behind measures to take tougher action against corporate defaulters and help banks recover over $120 billion in troubled loans. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who completes two years in office this month, had promised to introduce the code to address bank debts and improve ease of doing business in Asia's third largest economy.

Ao maybe George Soros was on to something after all, the Financial Times reported in an insight. On Monday the People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist party’s flagship newspaper, published a front-page interview with an “authoritative figure” who warned that the country’s soaring debt levels could lead to “systemic financial risks”. The last time the People’s Daily made such a splash was in January, when its overseas edition took Mr Soros to task for allegedly shorting the renminbi.

Plummeting oil prices have set off an economic unraveling in Nigeria, one of the world’s top oil producers, and the collective anger of a fed-up nation was pouring out, the International New York Times reported. “Starvation in the land of plenty,” said Tony Usidamen, a public relations consultant waiting for fuel. For months, many Nigerians have endured painfully long lines for gasoline and power failures that last for days — with no fuel for backup generators. Scant power means water cuts for homes that rely on electricity to pump it.

China is awash in a credit stimulus that is bigger as a proportion of GDP than the one that Beijing unleashed to haul the economy out of trouble in the aftermath of the 2008/2009 financial crisis. But this time around, the deluge is failing to boost growth in an economy already saturated with liquidity, a new statistical study shows, the Financial Times reported.

Why is conventional German thinking on macroeconomics so peculiar? And does it matter? the Financial Times reported in a commentary. The answer to the second question is that it matters a great deal. A part of the answer to the first is that Germany is a creditor. The financial crisis has given it a dominant voice in eurozone affairs. This is a matter of might, not right. Creditors’ interests are important. But they are partial, not general, interests.

Greece’s leader Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday claimed a major breakthrough in its debt-and-austerity talks, even as officials from Greece’s creditors warned that big obstacles remain to a deal that keeps the country afloat this summer, The Wall Street Journal reported. “After six years of continued cuts, bad news and harsh austerity, we finally had some good news,” Mr. Tsipras said in a televised speech to his cabinet. He said Greece was on course to get fresh bailout loans without having to legislate additional austerity measures.

China Minmetals Corp, the country's biggest metals trader, is raising 15 billion yuan ($2.3 billion) from investors to help restructure and list its financial assets, according to a fundraising document seen by Reuters. Minmetals-controlled Kingray New Materials Science & Technology, a loss-making electrical components maker, is seeking to issue shares to a Minmetals Corp subsidiary, China Minmetals Corp Ltd, to acquire all of Minmetals Capital Holdings, which owns the metals trader's financial assets, the document shows.

India's JSW Steel Ltd has bid for the British operations of Tata Steel Ltd, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed on Tuesday, prompting concerns about its debt levels and putting pressure on its shares, Reuters reported. JSW Steel said in a statement it was evaluating UK steel assets but did not name any specific target. "As part of the company's growth strategy, the company evaluates several opportunities including the current opportunity of UK steel facilities," JSW said.

Romanian thermal power plant CET Govora entered insolvency after a decision of the Ramnicu Valcea Court yesterday, Romania-Insider reported. The company will be managed by the judicial administrator Euro Insol, led by insolvency lawyer Remus Borza, reports local Agerpres. The insolvency house is also responsible for Romania’s largest energy producer Hidroelectrica. CET Govora is the second biggest company in the Valcea county. The power producer lost EUR 30.5 million after state – owned chemical producer Oltchim entered insolvency, in January 2013.

A confidential document debated by eurozone finance ministers detailed for the first time what Greece’s creditors could do to ease the country’s debt load and how that burden would develop over the coming decades without new relief measures. The document, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, served as the basis of Monday’s emergency meeting, in which the ministers discussed for the first time the possibility of further debt relief for Greece.