Headlines

A metals firm that was handed a £586million ­ Scottish Government ­support package to buy a Highland smelter is facing a court bankruptcy fight, the Daily Record reported. Taxpayers could be hit with losses if businessman Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance goes under as a result of the controversial deal signed by SNP ministers. The company, given massive state support to buy metal and power plants in Lanarkshire and Fort William, is now at the ­centre of a fraud investigation and it could be ­liquidated if it loses a court ­battle with creditors.

A start-up investment group backed by Sir Terry Leahy that secured close to £11 million in emergency pandemic loans is being scrutinised over a series of insolvencies set to cost taxpayers about £2 million, the London Times reported. We Are Nova, which is under investigation by the government’s Insolvency Service over alleged misuse of the bounce back loan scheme, is the subject of separate inquiries over subsidiaries that collapsed before the pandemic.

Non-banking finance company Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd NSE 0.93 % has approached the dedicated bankruptcy court on Friday a plea to admit Mumbai-based realty development firm Radius Estate Projects under Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP), the Economic Times of India reported. The realty firm owes over Rs 798 crore to Indiabulls Housing Finance. This is the second such plea filed against the realty development company, which is also facing insolvency proceedings in a petition filed by SBICAP Trustee Company Ltd.

Japan's wholesale prices in April jumped 10% from the same month a year earlier, data showed on Monday, rising at a record rate as the Ukraine crisis and a weak yen pushed up the cost of energy and raw materials, Reuters reported. The surge in the corporate goods price index (CGPI), which measures the price companies charge each other for their goods and services, marked the fastest year-on-year rise in a single month since comparable data became available in 1981. The gain followed a revised 9.7% increase in March, and was higher than a median market forecast for a 9.4% increase.

Japanese audio equipment maker Onkyo Home Entertainment Corp. has filed for bankruptcy, with some 3.1 billion yen (about $24 million) in total liabilities, the company announced on May 13, the Mainichi Japan reported. The firm, based in the Osaka Prefecture city of Higashiosaka, filed for the commencement of bankruptcy proceedings with the Osaka District Court and its petition was accepted, the company said. Besides its Onkyo brand, the firm also has the "Pioneer" brand under its umbrella. Due to a decline in earnings, Onkyo had been struggling with cash management.

Shipping traffic in and out of Russia has remained relatively strong in the past few months as companies have raced to fulfill contracts for purchases of energy and other goods before the full force of global sanctions goes into effect, the New York Times reported. With the European Union poised to introduce a ban on Russian oil in the coming months, that situation could change significantly. But so far, data show that while commerce with Russia has been reduced in many cases, it has yet to be crippled.

Consumer inflation in Russia accelerated in April to 17.83% in year-on-year terms, its highest level since January 2002, data showed on Friday, as it got a boost from the volatile rouble and unprecedented western sanctions that disrupted logistics chains, Reuters reported. But monthly inflation slowed to 1.56% in April from 7.61% in March when it staged the biggest month-on-month increase since January 1999, data from the federal statistics service Rosstat showed. Inflation in Russia has accelerated sharply after Russia began what it calls "a special military operation" in Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The World Bank said in a brief released on Wednesday that remittances to Ukraine are anticipated to increase more than 20 percent in 2022 against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of its neighboring country, The Hill reported. “Just as the [low- and middle-income countries] were starting to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the war on Ukraine erupted, altering the global landscape for migration and remittances. Remittances to Ukraine are expected to rise by over 20 percent in 2022,” the World Bank said in its Migration and Development Brief.

Exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui has said that he will drop his personal bankruptcy case because he says he does not have the money to cover the associated legal costs, Reuters reported. Guo, the former real estate magnate who fled China for the U.S. in 2014 ahead of corruption charges, said in court papers filed on Wednesday that he would not contest a call for his chapter 11 case to be thrown out by a fund that loaned money to Guo's companies.