Headlines

Portuguese paper merchant Inapa – Investimentos, Participações e Gestão, S.A. (Inapa IPG) said that it would present the company to insolvency under Portuguese law after its German subsidiary filed for insolvency on 22 July 2024, EUWID-Paper.com reported. The German subsidiary Inapa Deutschland had a short-term cash shortage of €12m, for which no financing solution was found within the period established in accordance with German law, the company explained in a statement.

A worrying run of data has dialed up calls for help to boost China’s economy. The central bank has answered with a flurry of rate cuts that analysts view as a welcome sign of action. But a number of restraints, from a weak currency to banks’ falling profitability, lead many to think that ultimately, it is fiscal policy that needs to come to the rescue, the Wall Street Journal reported. On Monday, the People’s Bank of China unexpectedly trimmed a key short-term policy rate for the first time since last summer, saying it aims to ramp up support for the economy.

Private lenders to PT Visi Media Asia secured a rare win in Indonesian court after a Jakarta judge ruled to fully admit their $560 million claim, allowing them to participate in the debt restructuring of the embattled media company, Bloomberg News reported. The ruling by Judge Kadarisman Al Riskandar of the Central Jakarta Commercial Court on Monday overruled an earlier decision by court administrators who had rejected the claim, according to a statement from a group of creditors. Lenders to the company include funds managed by Tor Investment Management and Varde Partners Inc.

Under Cairo’s baking summer sun, a forecourt of heavily discounted new Toyotas showcases a surprising side-effect of March’s dramatic currency devaluation: prices for big-ticket items are tumbling, Bloomberg News reported. They’ve fallen so much, in fact, that would-be buyers of everything from sofas to refrigerators and automobiles are holding off, convinced they can wait for a better deal. Almost no one is splashing out — and that’s an issue Egypt’s consumer-led economy needs to overcome.

Turkey’s central bank said it’s focusing attention on a build-up of lira liquidity as it extended its interest-rate pause into a fourth month, Bloomberg News reported. The Monetary Policy Committee, led by Governor Fatih Karahan, left the one-week repo rate at 50% on Tuesday, in line with the forecasts of all analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. It repeated that the sterilization of liquidity “will be implemented effectively” with additional tools “whenever needed.” The price of 10-year lira government bonds rose, sending the yield down 28 basis points to 27.78% as of 4:16 p.m. in Istanbul.

South Korean prosecutors said Tuesday they have arrested the founder of technology giant Kakao Corp. for alleged stock price rigging during his company’s takeover of a major K-pop agency last year, the Associated Press reported. Kim’s arrest came after the Seoul Southern District Court approved an arrest warrant, citing concerns that he could flee or destroy evidence. Prosecutors have up to 20 days to investigate Kim and determine whether to indict him, according to a senior prosecutor at a Seoul district prosecutors’ office. He requested anonymity because an investigation was under way.

About a year-and-a-half after the collapse of crypto-friendly banks in the US, European players are pushing to reinvigorate the market for around-the-clock payments in the digital-asset sector, Bloomberg News reported. A pair of Swiss lenders — AMINA Bank AG and Sygnum Bank AG — have debuted real-time payment and settlement networks in recent weeks. They are targeting a gap in the market left by the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN) and Signature Bank’s Signet platform which, prior to their collapse in March 2023, played a crucial role in bringing liquidity to the crypto market.

Sweden's Oscar Properties said on Monday that Brf Innovationen, a housing cooperative, had filed an application for the real estate firm to be declared bankrupt, citing a breach of a settlement agreement, Reuters reported. Oscar Properties said in a statement that it disputes the bankruptcy application and may seek formal restructuring in its court response. It had previously evaded bankruptcy in a similar situation, when Brf Innovationen retracted its earlier application in January after the companies reached a settlement.

Byju Raveendran, an Indian mathematics whiz who soared from teacher to startup billionaire before his education-technology company imploded this year, now faces his biggest test, the Economic Times of India reported. The future of Raveendran's eponymous Byju's online coaching firm rests with India's courts after the county's biggest startup, once loved by global investors who valued it at $22 billion, crashed below $2 billion in valuation. The 44-year-old founder last week lost control of the company as a tribunal kick-started an insolvency process.