Good day and welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy's Daily Briefing. It's Monday, April 14. In today's briefing, Byju’s secretly moved more than $500 million out of the U.S. through a little-known hedge fund to evade lenders. And Scania acquired Northvolt’s heavy industry business through a deal finalized during Northvolt’s bankruptcy proceedings.

When Indian education-technology company Byju’s was ordered last year to freeze over $500 million as part of a U.S. court battle with its lenders, it said the funds were safely within the business.

Byju’s by that time had already moved the half-billion dollars out of the U.S. through transactions involving a little-known hedge fund that were obscured in financial statements showing the cash sitting in its accounts, court records show. The company fraudulently transferred the money out of its lenders’ grasp through the hedge fund, which once listed a Miami IHOP restaurant as its address, a U.S. bankruptcy judge found in February.

The company’s lenders haven’t recovered any of those funds despite a global collection campaign spanning the U.S., U.K., Dubai and India, where Byju’s first grew from a small test-prep service to become the country’s largest startup, once valued at over $22 billion before going bankrupt.

A defunct talc-mining subsidiary of a global minerals supplier will make its case Monday for remaining in chapter 11 against personal injury claimants who argue it has no right to bankruptcy protection because it has no business to reorganize.

Barretts Minerals has put forward a chapter 11 plan to resolve asbestos-related claims against itself and its parent company, Minerals Technologies, which was spun off from Pfizer in 1992. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston is scheduled to hear arguments from a committee of asbestos-injury claimants who have asked that the bankruptcy be dismissed.

The dispute is the latest standoff over whether the protections of bankruptcy should extend to solvent businesses facing large numbers of injury claims. Courts have recently curbed the use of chapter 11 to resolve some mass torts and placed constraints on what corporations can do in bankruptcy.

Swedish truck maker Scania acquired Northvolt’s heavy industry business after reaching an agreement with the company’s bankruptcy trustee.

A deal had been struck to buy the business earlier this year as the battery maker worked through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection process to restructure its debt.

Northvolt later filed for bankruptcy in Sweden after it failed to secure the financial backing needed to continue operating.

Deep-sea mining doesn’t have international rules governing how minerals found on the ocean floor could be harvested despite more than a decade of debate, and that is pushing some companies to the breaking point.

One signaled its intention to bypass international law to start mining the ocean floor. And another has gone bankrupt, after six years of trying to do the same. Last week, Loke Marine Minerals, a Norwegian company that wanted to mine the ocean floor for critical minerals like copper and cobalt, filed for bankruptcy. The company, established in 2019, raised $30 million in the hope of exploring the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean and Norwegian shelf for minerals. However, it struggled to move forward because of a lack of industry rules that damped investor interest.

The meteoric popularity among American shoppers of China-founded app Shein was greatly helped by duty-free shipping of its ultracheap fashion. After President Trump closed that option for Chinese goods, its clothes will now bear the full impact of his new tariffs.

The U.S. tariffs imposed on Wednesday and China’s retaliation throw a wet blanket over all goods trade between the two countries. For Shein, the additional impact of Trump’s move to end the so-called de minimis exemption for China means a double hit and perhaps the most pivotal challenge for the fashion giant, whose links to China have long landed it at the center of U.S.-China tensions.

Two stainless steel fire pits look nearly identical. The Solo Stove sells for about $250 and is made mostly in China. Its Amish rival costs $500 and just got a big leg up from President Trump.

The new U.S. tariffs will drive up costs for the maker of Solo Stove and could push the already-struggling market leader into bankruptcy. The Texas-based company, which propelled its sales with heavy advertising during the pandemic, is now slashing marketing and revisiting its prices.

Sunnova Energy has appointed Tony Horton and Jeffrey S. Stein as independent directors, effective April 11, 2025. Both bring decades of financial and strategic expertise, particularly in corporate turnarounds and restructuring.

Horton and Stein will be part of a newly formed special committee to evaluate Sunnova’s capital structure and explore strategic alternatives. Directors Mary Yang and Akbar Mohamad have stepped down, and CEO Paul Mathews has been reclassified as a Class III Director. These changes reflect Sunnova’s ongoing efforts to strengthen governance and stabilize its financial footing, while it is discussing debt reorganization with its stake holders, the company said. —Jodi Klein 

• California-based Lucid Group on Friday said it will acquire select Arizona-based facilities and assets previously belonging to bankrupt electric and hydrogen-powered truckmaker Nikola Corp. (Reuters)

Share your tips, suggestions and feedback with the WSJ Pro Bankruptcy team: Soma Biswas; Alexander Gladstone; Jodi Xu Klein; Akiko Matsuda; Andrew Scurria; Becky Yerak. 

Follow us on Twitter: @SomaBisWSJ; @gladstonea; @jodixu; @AskAkiko; @AndrewScurria; @beckyyerak.