Headlines

Shares of China Evergrande’s electric car unit plunged as much as 26 percent on Monday after it warned it faced an uncertain future unless it got a swift injection of cash and after it said it will not proceed with plans to issue yuan-denominated shares, Al Jazeera reported. The warning by China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group after the market closed on Friday was the clearest sign yet that the embattled property developer’s liquidity crisis is worsening in other parts of its business.

Bankrupt Chinese conglomerate HNA Group moved a step forward in its restructuring process on Monday with a plan to inject fresh capital into its core airline subsidiary, Nikkei Asia reported. Investors in Hainan Airlines Holding agreed to a plan to double the capital base and allot new shares to a designated strategic investor and a certain group of creditors who will be compensated in stock, according to an announcement.

DS Kulkarni Developers Ltd. owners are accused of cheating more than 30,000 investors of more than ₹2,000 crore, the Hindustan Times reported. The case is being investigated by the economic offences wing (EOW) of the Pune police. Pune Investors in the DS Kulkarni group of companies have demanded that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) investigate alleged payments made by DSK firms to various money lenders and brokers. A consortium comprised of Ashdan Properties, Classic Promoters and Builders and Atul Builders will take over the debt-ridden group through the insolvency process.

If the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) finds evidence of criminal irregularities, it will approach the special courts, set up under the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013, to punish the guilty, the Financial Express reported. Amid clamour for a greater scrutiny of the conduct of lenders, the IBBI is set to oversee complaints against members of the committee of creditors (CoC) if they fail to comply with a proposed code of conduct while resolving toxic assets.

Former caretaker prime minister Panagiotis Pikrammenos has explained that the administration he was in charge of had prepared plans to shut down Greece’s banking system if elections in 2012 could not produce a government, Ekathimerini.com reported. Two ballots were held in May and June of 2012, with the second one eventually resulting in a three-party government led by New Democracy. “We were on the verge of bankruptcy,” Pikrammenos told Skai in an interview. “If elections [had] failed to yield a clear result, we would [have] shut down the banks.

The rise of gas prices could act as a catalyst for oil demand and thus more cargo for oil tankers, should more countries opt for oil-based supplies for their winter needs, Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide reported. A cold winter could also play its part. In its latest weekly report, shipbroker Gibson said that “the current strength in gas prices is having major ramifications for global energy markets. Record prices in Europe and Asia are forcing utility firms to look for alternative energy sources and have pushed some companies into bankruptcy.

China sent shock waves through global markets on Friday after its central bank issued a shock statement that said all cryptocurrency-related transactions are illegal and must be banned, Sharecafe reported. It was the strongest signal from the country of its determination to crack down on the industry, even though it is working on its own cryptocurrency. The surprise announcement and the way it was slipped out on Friday on the PBOC website, with no minister’s name attached, also raised eyebrows.

India is planning new measures to clarify a landmark corporate bankruptcy law that was meant to bring the nation's largest corporate borrowers to heel, amid complaints it has become a “mockery of justice,” Nikkei Asia reported. The law giving more power to creditors was one of the Modi government’s signature reforms, but five years after it went into effect, banks are still taking big losses in bankruptcies, and the debt-resolution process has been plagued by delays and legal uncertainty.

The bankruptcy of Chinese real estate company Evergrande is much more than a “Chinese Lehman,” according to an OpEd in Eurasia Review. Lehman Brothers was much more diversified than Evergrande and better capitalized. In fact, the total assets of Evergrande that are on the brink of bankruptcy outnumber the entire subprime bubble of the U.S. The problem with Evergrande is that it is not an anecdote, but a symptom of a model based on leveraged growth and seeking to inflate GDP at any cost with ghost cities, unused infrastructure and wild construction, according to the OpEd.

China’s HNA Group, which declared bankruptcy earlier this year after struggling to pay off debts that once totalled over $100 billion, has added a new chapter to its restructuring as two of its top officials have been taken away by police, mingtiandi.com reported. Chairman Chen Feng, who founded Hainan Airlines in 1989 and grew it into the sprawling conglomerate known as HNA, was detained for suspected crimes, along with chief executive Adam Tan, HNA said in a statement to its official WeChat account late Friday.