Headlines

Chinese authorities said that they took “criminal mandatory measures” against some employees at the money management business of Zhongzhi Enterprise Group Co., weeks after a Beijing court accepted the shadow banking giant’s bankruptcy application, Bloomberg News reported. Police in Beijing said the recovery of “stolen goods” is underway as it took action against suspects which included executives, according to a statement on WeChat on Saturday.

The profits were multiplying at a dizzying clip: 50%, 100%, then suddenly almost 200%. Even for long-time veterans at Attestor Ltd., a boutique London firm that specializes in trading distressed assets, this had the makings of a score to remember, Bloomberg News reported. The trade — targeting the remains of Sam Bankman-Fried’s once-vast cryptocurrency empire — became a popular one in distressed investing circles last year.

An underachieving comedy festival in England and attempts by Facebook and YouTube to compete with the increasingly popular TikTok are among the factors that led revenue to plummet at the Just for Laughs festival parent company last year, a Quebec Superior Court filing suggests, the Canadian Press reported. The report on Thursday from insolvency trustee PwC, formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, lists the circumstances that left Groupe Juste pour rire inc. unable to pay its debts.

A Luxembourg court declared construction company Maçonlux bankrupt on Friday, making it the latest victim of the country’s construction downturn, despite a recent job cull in an attempt by the firm to avoid collapse, the Luxembourg Times reported. At the end of February, construction company Carvalho had warned it will seek bankruptcy, leaving 103 staff unemployed. This was preceded in December by renovation specialist Batipol, which employed 35 people.

European venture capital-backed companies are signing up to increasingly complex convertible debt deals which risk giving investors more control or bigger payouts further down the road, people involved in the deals told Reuters. Ultra-low interest rates allowed growing companies to complete equity funding rounds at sky-high valuations during a boom in 2020 and 2021. But as venture funding has dried up, companies and their investors have been wary of equity funding rounds which risk establishing a new, lower valuation.

Pakistan’s central bank held the key interest rate at a record high for a sixth straight meeting, as a newly-elected government holds loan talks with the International Monetary Fund that wants a tight monetary policy to curb inflation, Bloomberg News reported. The State Bank of Pakistan kept the target rate at 22%, according to a statement on Monday. Thirty of the 37 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg predicted a hold while the rest expected a cut. The decision comes as a new government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif seeks a new loan of at least $6 billion from the multilateral lender.

Singapore’s non-oil domestic exports fell unexpectedly in February, but economists still see encouraging signs of a better trade outlook ahead, the Wall Street Journal reported. The 0.1% on-year drop in exports last month was driven mainly by a decline in shipments of non-electronic goods, data from Enterprise Singapore showed Monday. That compared with a revised 16.7% expansion in January. Non-electronics exports declined 1.5% on year in February, compared with January’s revised 21.1% expansion.

The number of companies declared insolvent in England and Wales last month was 17% higher than a year earlier, as many businesses continued to struggle following a surge in costs last year and ongoing high interest rates, Reuters reported. The Insolvency Service, a government agency, said 2,102 companies were declared insolvent, up from 1,801 in February 2023 and more than 50% higher than in February 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began to hit Britain.

Insolvent Romanian insurer Euroins, under the external management of CITR insolvency experts, has sued the Bulgarian reinsurance company EIG Re in order to recover some RON 800 million (EUR 160 million) transferred by the Romanian subsidiary a couple of weeks before losing its operating license, Romania-Insider.com reported. CITR sued EIG Re, a reinsurance firm in the Eurohold group, both in Romania and Bulgaria, Economica.net reported. The money was transferred to EIG Re under a contract with unusual clauses that block Euroins’ access to the funds in case it loses the operating license.

Indian tech firm Think & Learn Pvt must freeze $533 million in order to protect the money for disgruntled lenders who claim the cash should only be used to pay them, a U.S. judge said yesterday, Bloomberg News reported. The decision by US Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey was a mixed victory for lenders. They earlier demanded the money be placed under the control of the federal court to prevent the cash from being spent by the Indian education-tech firm, which operates under the name Byju’s.