An expanding program between Rowan University and Amazon is helping students fund their education and, in some cases, graduate debt free.

Operating through a partnership via Rowan Online, the University’s web portal, the Amazon Career Choice program supports eligible operations and fulfillment employees with pre-paid tuition and reimbursement for books and fees.

“Through programs like Amazon Career Choice, we’re helping deliver education where it’s needed,” said David Coyner, Rowan vice president for Academic Innovation & Online Partnerships.

Florinda Friend, who graduates in May with a degree in Applied Professional Communication, is a five-year Amazon employee who began taking courses through Career Choice…

Debt collection in emerging markets often feels outdated and can be costly — damaging borrower trust. As consumer lending surges and regulators push for fairer practices, legacy collection outfits are struggling to maintain pace.

ClearGrid aims to help modernize debt collection — and recovery — with AI. The Dubai-based startup, which is emerging from stealth with $10 million in funding ($3.5 million pre-seed and $6.5 million seed), helps banks, fintechs, and lenders recover more debt without resorting to customer harassment.

For a startup founded just in May 2023, the backing is significant. Co-founder and CEO Mohammed Al Zaben called it a crucial advantage for a “very ambitious company with a big mission in a very big…

Photo: RNZ / Louise Ternouth

A small business which worked on school lunch provider Libelle Group’s production line equipment said it was “blindsided” by the provider going into liquidation.

A report by liquidators’ Robert Campbell and David Webb of Deloitte on Tuesday found Libelle Group owed more than $14 million to 248 creditors.

One of them is the Hamilton company Echo Automation, whose owner Sean Donovan told Checkpoint Libelle Group owed them about $15,000.

“Everything’s pretty tough right now, but it’s just another spanner in the works, isn’t it?” he said.

“If you work that on about a 15 percent return, that’s about $100,000 we’ve got to make before we start making any profit again.”

Donovan said it was a lot of…

“KTM is saved!”, many outlets proclaimed a few short weeks ago when the Austrian insolvency courts stated that the company, its debtors, and its shareholders had come to an agreement on how to move forward after basically declaring bankruptcy last year. They were saved! Production is set to resume. And the company’s beleaguered CEO, the man who made many of the financially bad decisions, was out.

Well, sort of. 

But so many pundits, commenters, and folks outside the industry saw this as a win for the manufacturer. And, by and large, it is. But there were caveats to that win. KTM still had to pay a lot of money to its creditors. It had to excise the demon that…

For more than thirty years, college students have been assured that their student loan debts would not follow them forever. The federal government promised that if they paid a portion of their income every month, after a certain number of years any remaining debt would be forgiven. This fundamentally important component of the federal student loan program is currently in danger because of a partisan fight in the courts.

As part of his broader effort to provide loan relief for public servants, seniors, the disabled, and victims of for-profit college scams, President Joe Biden last year created a repayment program called SAVE that offered more generous terms than prior plans. In challenging the SAVE plan in court,…

Southern Water is seeking debt relief from some of its creditors, it was reported on Wednesday, as its owner Macquarie Asset Management injected fresh capital into the struggling UK utility.

According to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter, the company had approached creditors holding riskier debt at the holding company level, asking them to accept losses on a portion of their £380m in outstanding loans.

However, creditors were apparently resisting the terms and pushing for better conditions.

The request came as part of a broader effort to stabilise Southern Water’s finances, which included £6.7bn in total net debt.

Bloomberg said the firm was raising £900m from shareholders to strengthen its balance sheet,…

The economic landscape of Thailand is currently facing considerable challenges, marked by a significant decline in the SET INDEX, which has fallen to approximately 1,159 points. This drop reflects an alarming loss of investor confidence since Prime Minister Phaethongthan Shinawatra assumed office in August last year when the index was at 1,303, signifying a decrease of 11% or about 49,500 million baht in market value. Amidst these worries, the ramifications of external economic powers, particularly the United States and China, loom large.

China remains focused on attaining an economic growth rate of around 5%, alongside keeping inflation below 2%. Officials are deploying measures such as issuing 4.4 trillion yuan in…

Latest analysis by Allianz Trade has predicted that global business insolvencies will keep rising over the next two years.

Insolvencies rose by 10% in 2024,  and are expected to grow by 6% in 2025 and 3% in 2026. This would result in five successive years of increasing insolvencies (2022 – 2026).

The UK bucks both the global and US trends, in which insolvencies will continue to rise. By the end of 2024, UK business insolvencies began to show signs of a downward trend reversal, registering 26,708 cases. It was the first slight decrease (-5%) after three consecutive years of strong rises that pushed insolvencies to a 10-year record in 2023, as firms faced a succession of shocks and challenges, from Brexit-related…

Today’s company insolvency statistics show accommodation and food services insolvencies fell 7% from 3,747 in the 12 months to January 2024 to 3,474 in the 12 months to January 2025. However, insolvencies in the sector increased 21% month-on-month, from 225 in December 2024 to 273 in January 2025, and were up 3% when compared to the same month last year (265).

Saxon Moseley, partner and head of leisure and hospitality at leading audit, tax and consulting firm RSM UK, said:
“Hospitality trade at the start of the year was particularly tough, so the rise in insolvencies in January was expected, but perhaps not as bad as feared. While some operators managed to weather the storm at the end of last year to maximise trade during the…