Turkey’s central bank held borrowing costs on Thursday and flagged that it could tighten interest rates should inflation rise further as war in the Middle East drives up energy prices, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Central Bank of Turkey held its benchmark one-week repo rate at 37.0%. Investors put slightly more chance of a hike than a hold, according to LSEG data ahead of the decision. In January, the bank cut its key rate for a fifth meeting in a row to 37.0% from 38.0%.

The Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeal by foreign liquidators to sue Standard Chartered and BSI Bank over transactions allegedly linked to the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) saga, blocking efforts to recoup assets lost in one of the world’s largest financial scandals, the Singapore Business Times reported.

Sonata Software Ltd has filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition in a US court against a retail client over unpaid dues of about $10.65 million, an amount equivalent to roughly 6.6% of the company’s incremental revenue last fiscal, LiveMint.com reported. The claim highlights the financial exposure from a client ramp-down in Sonata’s retail segment, which contributes about $100 million, or 8% of the company’s revenue, and comes as the firm is also grappling with a reduction in business from Microsoft Corp.

World leaders announced their most forceful response to the surge in oil prices since the war in Iran began at the end of last month, with Japanese and German officials saying they would release oil from their strategic reserves, the New York Times reported. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Japan would begin releasing oil as early as next Monday. Less than an hour later, Germany’s economy minister, Katherina Reiche, said her country would also release oil. Austria will also release oil from its reserves, the country’s economy minister, Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer, said.

China’s domestic passenger car sales fell sharply in February from a year earlier, industry figures showed Wednesday, reflecting weakening demand as some trade-in subsidies are phased out, Bloomberg News reported. Only 950,000 units of passenger cars were sold in China last month, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, down from nearly 1.4 million vehicles sold in January. It was the fourth straight month of year-on-year declines.

A growing number of residents in Seoul are falling into irrecoverable debt, with new city data showing that people in their 60s and older now make up the majority of personal bankruptcy applicants, The Korea Herald reported. Six out of every 10 individuals who sought personal bankruptcy assistance through the Seoul Financial Welfare Counseling Center last year were aged 60 or above, according to a report released Tuesday. The center analyzed 1,192 valid bankruptcy applications filed in 2025 as part of its annual review of bankruptcy counseling cases.

Courts in South Korea will use a new set of guidelines in rehabilitation hearings to write off people’s crypto debts in an attempt to stop citizens from going bankrupt, DLNews.com reported. The new rules will see three courts, opened this month in the cities of Daejeon, Daegu, and Gwangju, exclude debts incurred from stock or cryptocurrency investments from liquidation calculations. And this, in turn, will reduce the overall amount debtors need to pay their creditors in personal rehabilitation proceedings, South Korean media outlet EToday reported.

Corporate dispute appellate tribunal NCLAT has set aside an appeal filed by Reliance Realty seeking insolvency proceedings against Altruist Customer Management, the Economic Times of India reported. A three-member bench of the appellate tribunal upheld the order of the Delhi-based National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) which had rejected the insolvency plea after it observed a pre-existing dispute between the parties. The NCLT, on October 5, 2024, dismissed the plea after it observed a dispute of over Rs 24.34 crore.