India

For the past three years, steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta has performed an extraordinary feat of corporate survival, Bloomberg News reported. The British industrialist managed to keep most of his empire of steel plants even as creditors circled, concerns arose about alleged wrongdoing regarding trades and he faced probes for suspected fraud and money laundering. Now his luck may be running out. Gupta’s Speciality Steel UK Ltd. unit went to court in London Wednesday to try to avoid liquidation.

The chief content officer of troubled Indian tech firm Byju’s and an ally of the company’s founder face financial sanctions in the US for their roles in stripping software, cash and other assets from businesses under court supervision, Bloomberg News reported. A federal judge is considering imposing millions of dollars in sanctions on Byju’s manager Vinay Ravindra and company ally Rajendran Vellapalath, who founded Dubai-based tech startup Voizzit Technology. At a court hearing yesterday, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John T.

Glas Trust, which represents a group of US entities that lent $1.2 billion to Byju's, on Monday questioned the maintainability of the Indian cricket board’s application to withdraw its insolvency petition against the cash-strapped edtech firm, the Economic Times of India reported. At the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), Glas Trust cited procedural lapses for seeking rejection of the application filed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

The Indian government is working on an integrated platform for the insolvency ecosystem covering key stakeholders that will also help speed up resolution processes. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), which came into force in 2016, aims to provide market-linked and time-bound resolution of stressed assets, the Economic Times of India reported. However, there have been delays in the resolution process. Anita Shah Akella, Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), on Tuesday emphasised that IBC is not a recovery mechanism but a rescue mechanism.

India has started an investigation into financing and accounting practices at Byju’s after a previous inspection found corporate governance lapses at the struggling online tutoring firm, Bloomberg News reported. The federal government has asked the regional office of the Registrar of Companies in Hyderabad to investigate Byju’s books to ascertain if the company misreported financial statements and whether funds were siphoned off. There were shortcomings in the accounts of Byju’s. They didn’t specify what those failings were. The registrar’s office has one year to submit its report.

Creditors have recovered around Rs 3.55 lakh crore through resolution of 1,068 cases under the insolvency law till September this year, the government said on Monday. In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Corporate Affairs Harsh Malhotra also said that a total of 1,963 Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) cases are ongoing and out of them, 1,388 have exceeded the time limit of 270 days, the Economic Times of India reported.

The founder of bankrupt Indian tech firm Byju’s tried to use loan proceeds that he allegedly hid from US lenders to secretly buy back a software company that was taken over by an American trustee, according to a new court filing, Bloomberg News reported. Byju Raveendran has been trying to regain control his capsizing education technology empire, which is under court supervision in both India, where the parent is based, and the US, where some of its valuable units are located, according to a court declaration filed by Nebraska businessman William R. Hailer.