Headlines

PwC, one of the world's biggest accounting firms, is paying HK$1.3 billion ($166 million) in fines and compensation in Hong Kong over its audit work for the failed Chinese property developer Evergrande, which was said to have overstated revenues, the Associated Press reported. Hong Kong's accounting regulator on Thursday also announced a six-month ban on PwC from working for new clients and said it had issued a public reprimand to two of its former partners for misconduct, fining each of them a separate HK$5 million.
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Goldman Sachs has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing ​the Wall Street bank of defrauding shareholders about its work ‌for 1MDB, a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund that became embroiled in a corruption scandal, Reuters reported. In a letter filed on Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, Goldman and the ​shareholders said they reached an agreement-in-principle to settle, and plan ​to submit a settlement for preliminary approval by May ⁠20.
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The State Bank of India has moved a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a review of its February 13 judgment, which held that spectrum, a finite public resource, cannot be used as “assets” owned by telecom service providers (TSPs) during Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code proceedings, TheHindu.com reported. The bank (SBI), acting on behalf of creditors to the bankrupt Aircel group, said the judgment had a far-reaching impact on lenders in insolvency and liquidation proceedings. It argued that the verdict may potentially affect bank financing and risk assessment.
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Poland registered the largest increase in the insolvency number with 17.8%. By contrast, Croatia recorded -18.6% insolvencies in 2025. While overall insolvency figures across Central and Eastern Europe stabilized overall in 2025, Coface’s latest CEE Insolvency Study reveals a far more fragmented reality, with sharp divergences between countries and sectors increasingly shaped by diverging macroeconomic conditions, The Romania Journal reported. At regional level, insolvency proceedings increased by only 0.26% in 2025, rising from 46,043 in 2024 to 46,161 in 2025.
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Latvia's parliament, the Saeima, on Thursday supported amendments to the Insolvency Law and related laws, which provide for the liquidation of the Insolvency Control Service and the transfer of its functions to the Ministry of Justice, the Court Administration and the Latvian Association of Insolvency Administrators, Latvian Public Media reported. It is planned that in the future the Ministry of Justice will have to supervise insolvency administrators.
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The collapse of Lord Mandelson’s consulting firm will leave its lenders and business partners with losses of £4.5m, new filings reveal, The Telegraph reported. Global Counsel owed money to HMRC, office administrators, data companies and other business advisory firms when it went into administration in February, Companies House filings show.
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Switzerland watered down its proposed capital rules aimed at making UBS UBS 0.87%increase; green up pointing triangle safer, but said the bank would still have to add around $20 billion in additional buffers to prevent a repeat of the problems that brought down Credit Suisse, the Wall Street Journal reported. The changes announced Wednesday mean UBS won’t immediately face an $11 billion deduction from its $71 billion capital related to certain intangible assets such as software and deferred tax assets, as some analysts had predicted.
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The conflict has severely constricted the supply of oil from the Persian Gulf. Countries with the financial means — China, Japan, Europe, the United States — are securing much of what they need, paying whatever it takes. Some are restricting exports to hold on to what they have. That has pushed prices higher everywhere, the New York Times reported. At the same time, shortages threaten less affluent nations in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Some economists are describing this as hoarding.
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The Bank of England has told City firms to bolster their cyber defenses against the threat of new artificial intelligence-powered hacking bots, The Telegraph reported. Banks, insurers and payments firms were summoned to a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the cybersecurity risks posed by “frontier AI models”, which include Anthropic’s new Mythos bot that was deemed too dangerous to release to the public. At the meeting, which was held by the Bank of England’s Cross Market Operational Resilience Group (CMORG), City firms were urged to strengthen their cybersecurity.
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South Korean and Vietnamese companies signed 73 business deals on tech, energy and infrastructure on Thursday as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung visited Hanoi, a ‌list seen by Reuters showed. The agreements, which were mostly non-binding with no value mentioned, followed the signing a day ‌earlier of 12 cooperation pacts at a meeting between Lee and Vietnam's top leader To Lam, including on Korean possible investment in a new nuclear ​plant in southern Vietnam.
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