Some breaking news just in: billionaire Gautam Adani has been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US with defrauding investors and hiding plans to bribe Indian officials.

Adani is one of the world’s richest people and the Chair of Indian conglomerate Adani Group, which runs a major coal mine in Queensland.

The Associated Press is reporting he has been indicted in the US on charges he duped investors in a massive solar energy project in his home country by concealing that it was facilitated by alleged bribery of more than US $250 million.

Several other people connected to Adani, his businesses and the project were also charged.

With The Associated Press and Reuters

My colleague Riley Stuart is on the ground in the US and filed this fascinating report peeling back the layers of the murky world of oligarchs in US politics:

And watch this excellent story by my colleague Nassim Khadem on a woman’s fight to access her partner’s life insurance from superannuation giant Cbus :

In case you missed it, here’s what was on The Business last night:

Business failures have hit their highest level since October 2020 — the previous record level — with the hospitality and construction sectors seeing the most insolvencies, according to CreditorWatch.

Higher prices and interest rates are keeping spending subdued, while businesses are juggling rising rent, electricity prices and increases to the minimum wage.

CreditorWatch chief executive Patrick Coghlan says he expects insolvencies to increase over the next 12-months — he joined Kirsten Aiken on The Business:

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And you can read a full write-up from Kate Ainsworth here:

Good morning and welcome to the ABC’s business and markets blog. Nadia Daly here with you to take you through the morning’s news.

The Australian share market looks set to fall on opening, following Wall Street’s lead. Markets there were lower while they await the release of AI giant Nvidia’s quarterly results, after the closing bell. At 7:30am AEDT the company’s share price is 2% lower (it’s risen around 200% so far this year).

In a note to investors, the ever-enthusiastic Dan Ives, analyst at Wedbush, said:

“In a nutshell, we expect another ‘drop the mic performance’ from Nvidia today”

But not everyone is taking such a bullish view of AI.

Back home, it’s expected to be a relatively quiet day with no local data releases here but there are lots of local AGMs on the cards – from MinRes to ResMed and more. We will keep our eyes peeled for any major developments out of those.