Headlines

A top official of Indian tech firm Byju’s violated his fiduciary duty to lenders by wrongly hiding $533 million from them, according to a US court ruling on Friday, a win for creditors vying to collect on a defaulted $1.2 billion loan, Bloomberg News reported. Byju’s fraudulently transferred at least part of the money to a small hedge fund based in Miami to keep it out of lenders’ hands, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey also ruled.

Amidst robust growth of electric two-wheelers, India’s first electric scooter maker Hero Electric is up for insolvency resolution under IBC (Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code), with the resolution professional (RP) inviting prospective bidders for the now bankrupt company, the Economic Times of India reported. The Expression of Interest (EOI) from prospective bidders for the company was floated on February 18 and is set to close on March 14, 2025. The RP will thereafter issue the final list of prospective resolution applicants on April 8.

Country Garden has again engaged Houlihan Lokey and China International Capital Corporation as financial advisers on its offshore debt restructuring, Bloomberg News reported. The defaulted property giant had previously hired Houlihan and CICC in 2023, but later parted ways. The advisory relationship with Houlihan was discontinued partly due to costs. Country Garden then appointed KPMG Advisory to the role in January 2024. Country Garden, which defaulted on dollar debt in 2023, has struggled to secure broad support for its restructuring.

The annual rate of inflation in the eurozone cooled for the first time in five months during February, reassuring news for policymakers at the European Central Bank as they prepare to meet later this week, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer prices were 2.4% higher in February than a year earlier, the EU’s statistics agency said Monday. That was a slower rate of inflation than the 2.5% recorded in January and followed four straight months of steadily faster price rises.

The Bank of England’s Andrew Bailey is a leading candidate to become the next chair of the Financial Stability Board, a move that would upend how the watchdog traditionally rotates its leadership at a fraught time for global policy making, Bloomberg News reported. While Bailey is considered a frontrunner for the role, the group remains in discussions about who should take over for the Dutch National Bank’s Klaas Knot when his chair term expires in July, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing non-public deliberations.

Company executives and foreign officials are scrambling to avert the consequences of another tight deadline from President Trump, who has threatened to put stiff tariffs on goods coming in from China, Canada and Mexico starting just after midnight Tuesday. The president describes this as an effort to pressure those countries to stop the flow of deadly drugs and migrants to the United States. But Mr.

He is a college dropout who hawked energy drinks as a teen and sold Oreos to make rent. Under “skills” on LinkedIn, he listed “hustling expert.” Last month, Hayden Davis, 28 years old, became the face of the highest-profile cryptocurrency scandal since the implosion of FTX in 2022, one that has ensnared Argentine President Javier Milei, the Wall Street Journal reported. Propelled by self-confidence and networking savvy, Davis went from cookie seller to erstwhile crypto king, according to interviews and a review of more than a decade of social-media posts, podcasts and blog posts.

Britain's financial watchdog said on Friday a four-year prison sentence has been issued in the UK's first case involving unregistered cryptoasset activity, Reuters reported. London-based Olumide Osunkoya was found guilty of operating unregistered crypto ATMs for transactions worth 2.5 million pounds ($3.2 million) across several locations within the UK between December 2021 and March 2022, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said in a statement. Osunkoya was also convicted and sentenced for forgery, using false identity documents, and possessing criminal property at the court hearing.

A private gauge showed China’s manufacturing activity expanding at the fastest pace in three months, signaling a trend of improvement consistent with the official index, the Wall Street Journal reported. The China Caixin manufacturing purchasing managers index rose to 50.8 in February from 50.1 in January, according to data released Monday by Caixin Media Co. and S&P Global. It was the fifth consecutive month that the index stayed above 50, the threshold separating expansion from contraction.

German inflation unexpectedly remained unchanged in February, highlighting the challenges for the European Central Bank in deciding how quickly and how far to cut interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices increased 2.8% from a year ago, the statistics office said Friday. Economists in a Bloomberg survey had expected a slight slowdown to 2.7%. The report follows earlier figures showing French inflation retreated to its lowest level in four years, while price gains in Italy surprisingly held steady.