Headlines

Shareholders in Swedish electric car battery maker Northvolt agreed Wednesday at an extraordinary general meeting to allow the financially-strained company to continue operating and avoid liquidation, Agence France Presse reported. Northvolt filed for chapter 11 protection in the U.S. in late November to enable it to restructure its debt and reorganize its business. he battery maker said in U.S. filings that it owed $5.8 billion.

Germany is grappling with its worst wave of bankruptcies since the 2008 financial crisis, as 364 major companies declared bankruptcy in 2024, marking a dramatic 30% increase from the previous year, AL24News.com reported. The economic downturn has also led to a hiring freeze across many industries, with fewer German companies recruiting new employees. Meanwhile, the number of firms implementing job cuts is rising steadily, affecting nearly every sector.

Gokada, Nigeria’s largest-mile logistics delivery startup, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware in 2024, Tekedia.com reported. The filing highlighted significant financial difficulties, with liabilities exceeding $5.4 million against assets valued at just over $564,000. According to the court documents, Gokada principal assets include its 100% ownership in Gokada Rides limited, it’s Nigerian operational entity which it valued at $500,000, and $64,132.56 in cash held in a Silicon Valley bank account.

Country Garden has proposed a deal to its offshore creditors that will cut its debt by $11.6 billion, paving the way for the property developer to seek more time from the high court in Hong Kong to implement a restructuring plan, Reuters reported. The indebted developer has reached an understanding with a lender group made up of seven banks ahead of the company's liquidation hearing on Jan. 20 in Hong Kong, bringing it closer towards a restructuring of its offshore debt.

Greg Karpovsky, the founder of Stenn Technologies who was once feted by some of the biggest players on Wall Street, had suddenly gone quiet, Bloomberg News reported. Karpovsky said little on a Dec. 4 call with his 250-odd staff as they learned that his trade-finance business — valued at almost $1 billion just two years ago — had collapsed. He dialled in remotely, having left the UK just before Stenn’s British subsidiaries went into insolvency, people familiar with the matter said. On a call a week later, when most employees were made redundant, he didn’t appear at all.

Argentina paid international bondholders before a Thursday deadline, marking another step in President Javier Milei’s efforts to restore investors’ confidence in the serial defaulter, Bloomberg News reported. The government had some $4 billion worth of debt, between principal and interest payments, due on a slate of hard-currency notes. The payment included some $2.65 billion of credits issued under New York law in a 2020 restructuring. Finance Secretary Pablo Quirno said on a post on X Thursday morning that the government made its debt payments, without giving further details.

The European Central Bank should keep lowering borrowing costs at every meeting as long as the retreat in inflation matches its projections, according to Governing Council member Francois Villeroy de Galhau, Bloomberg News reported. Cuts should continue until the deposit rate — currently 3% — reaches a level that neither restricts nor stimulates the region’s 20-nation economy, the Bank of France chief said.

Eurozone retail trade inched up in November, although a slowing economy and low consumer confidence could upend a sustained revival ahead, the Wall Street Journal reported. The euro area’s retail-trade volumes rose marginally by 0.1% on month in November, the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat said Thursday. This flipped some of the 0.3% decline of October, but missed expectations of a better 0.3% increase from economists polled by The Wall Street Journal. October’s fall was the first drop since July.

Egyptian inflation slowed to its lowest level in two years, easing the path for the North African nation’s first interest-rate cut since 2020, Bloomberg News reported. Annual consumer prices in urban areas rose 24.1% in December versus 25.5% the month before, the state statistics agency CAPMAS said Thursday, marking a second consecutive month of slowing. It was its lowest since December 2022, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The monthly inflation rate eased to 0.2% from 0.5% in November.

German investment group Mutares SE & Co. said that its portfolio company Serneke Sverige AB has filed for bankruptcy in Sweden in the latest collapse of a builder in the biggest Nordic country, Bloomberg News reported. The filing at the Gothenburg District Court follows a “drastic financial deterioration during the second half of 2024,” according to a statement on Wednesday. The Swedish construction and real estate unit was agreed to be bought from Serneke Group AB in July last year and the transaction was completed in November.