The missed payment triggered a 30-day grace period, but fears were eased temporarily when Evergrande repaid the missed interest payment just days ahead of the fresh deadline that would have forced a formal default.
Theranos founder and former chief executive Elizabeth Holmes arrives at court in San Jose, California in August. Photograph: Nick Otto/AFP via Getty ImagesNearly 20 years after the launch of US start-up Theranos, its CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, headed to trial in August charged with defrauding clients and investors, in a case that captured the attention of millions and prompted a reckoning with the Silicon Valley hype machine.
Her defence sought to portray Holmes not as a villain but rather as a hard-working, young and naive businesswoman whose company simply failed, while the prosecution accused her of “lying and cheating” to attain wealth and fame at the expense of investors and patients. She said she could not have intentionally deceived anyone about Theranos’s technology, and presented herself as a naive and ambitious founder who believed her company’s technology worked.
Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer, typically supplies more than a third of the needs of countries across the European Union, but in November flows dropped to a six-year low. The development coincided with Russian aggression towards its neighbours in Ukraine. However, he complained the project was being held up by EU “red tape”, including a requirement that Gazprom surrender its monopoly on Russian gas exports and give third parties access to 50 per cent of the pipeline.
“It is clearly a matter of huge concern for all of us,” he said. “The situation that we are facing today is unbearable. Unbearable for our citizens, unbearable for the private companies. So there is a need to change.”