The year India's tycoons faced bankruptcies, jail - and even death

Mumbai

FOR many Indian tycoons, 2019 turned woeful as lenders - empowered by the nation's recent bankruptcy law and desperate to clean up soured debt from their books - started seizing assets of delinquent firms or dragged them into insolvency.

Indian banks wrote off a record US$39 billion of loans in the 18 months till September in a bid to repair their balance sheets as they battled the world's worst bad debt pile. Making matters worse, a shadow banking crisis led to a funding squeeze, crushing debt-laden businesses that were critically dependent on rollover financing.