After months of turmoil, there finally seems to be some respite for debt laden Koutons Retail India Ltd, the Economic Times reported. The debt restructuring plan for the apparel manufacturer has been finalised and the lenders will meet next week for the final approval, according to sources familiar with the development told ET Now. The company's total debt is Rs 660 crore out of which the long term debt of Rs 500 crore that will be payable over a period of 10 years including a 2 year moratorium.

The government on Friday said it would take three months to finalise the financial restructuring plan of cash-strapped national carrier Air India. "The exercise of finalising the financial restructuring plan and restructuring of loans would take about three months," civil aviation minister Vayalar Ravi told the Lok Sabha in a written reply, the Hindustan Times reported. Ravi's reply comes just a few days ahead of a crucial meeting of a ministerial panel headed by finance inister Pranab Mukherjee.

The proposed corporate debt restructuring (CDR) of at least five troubled Andhra Pradesh-based microfinance institutions (MFIs) is set to take off because banks might relax the stiff terms in the form of personal promoter guarantees, livemint.com reported. The deadline for completing the CDR process expires on 6 June.

The Air India board, in a meeting in Mumbai yesterday, cleared the debt restructuring plan of the airline, the Business Standard reported. The plan was prepared by SBI Capital market Ltd (SBICAPS) and vetted by financial advisory firm Delloite, after the Reserve Bank of India asked the airline to get it done by an independent firm. “The plan will now be discussed by the civil aviation ministry and the RBI, and our high-cost debt will be converted to low-cost.

The Indian Railways’ great “turnaround story”, which was making waves in business schools till a few months back, now appears headed towards an ignominious end, IndianExpress.com reported. A sharp decline in earnings and a serious escalation in expenditures are threatening to push India’s transport behemoth to near-bankruptcy.

A senior Hero Group executive has been arrested for allegedly receiving a part of more than 3 billion rupees ($67 million) believed to have been misappropriated at a Citigroup Inc. bank branch on the outskirts of New Delhi, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The executive, Sanjay Gupta, allegedly got about 200 million rupees, said Assistant Commissioner of Police Dalbir Singh. A court has allowed the police five days custody of the employee for questioning.

Indian mergers and acquisitions in 2011 may surpass this year’s record $71 billion of deals, led by oil and gas, metals and mining companies, according to M&A bankers, Bloomberg News reported today. Billionaire Sunil Mittal’s $10.7 billion acquisition of mobile-phone operators in Africa led an almost four-fold increase in takeovers this year as deals surpassed 2007’s $69 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

State Bank of India, the country's largest lender by assets, today tapped into the debt market to raise short-term funds for the first time in three months, as the banking system continued to face a severe liquidity crunch, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The state-run bank privately placed 11.50 billion rupees ($255 million) of certificates of deposit maturing in March and the deposits will pay a yield of 8.97 percent.

The chief executive of the Indian Banks Association indicated today that banks will ensure microlenders remain fully funded in the short term to help them overcome temporary hiccups in repayments and maintain business as usual, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Indian microlenders have been plagued by liquidity issues after the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh recently enacted laws to tighten regulation of the microfinance industry.

India’s rapidly growing private microcredit industry faces imminent collapse as almost all borrowers in one of India’s largest states have stopped repaying their loans, egged on by politicians who accuse the industry of earning outsize profits on the backs of the poor, the International Herald Tribune reported. The crisis has been building for weeks, but has now reached a critical stage.