Malaysia’s state palm oil plantation agency, the Federal Land Development Authority, is seeking 6 billion ringgit ($1.5 billion) from the government to help turn itself around, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The request will be included in a white paper on the company scheduled to be introduced in parliament on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported, citing a source. If approved, the funds would be paid out in stages, the report said. Felda, as the state-owned company is known, has been struggling to pay down debt amid financial losses and corruption allegations.

Most of the world’s best-performing bank stocks are now in China, a nation that’s barely started to recover from last year’s liquidity crunch, Bloomberg News reported. After snapping up Ping An Bank Co., traders have turned their attention to its larger rival China Merchants Bank Co. The Hong Kong shares jumped 15 percent in nine days through Monday to an all-time high, the longest winning streak since 2007. It was also near a record in the onshore market Tuesday.

The global economy has slowed sharply since last summer and will rely on a “precarious” boost from a few emerging markets to reverse the loss of momentum, the IMF has predicted in its latest economic forecast, the Financial Times reported. Cutting its outlook for 2019 and 2020, the fund judged that advanced economies would “continue to slow gradually” into next year while emerging economies would play a more positive role, led by an end to crisis conditions in Turkey and Argentina and stabilisation in the all-important Chinese growth rate.

An entity set up to finance affiliates of Etihad Airways PJSC said Jet Airways India Ltd. has become the third carrier in the group to fall behind on interest payments, Bloomberg News reported. EA Partners I, a vehicle created in 2015 to allow Etihad to provide funds to airlines in which it owned stakes, said in a statement that the Indian carrier failed to make a payment on March 19 on account of "temporary liquidity constraints." Etihad set up two vehicles, EA Partners I and II, which sold $1.2 billion of bonds to raise funds for several airlines.

Turkey plans to shore up its battered banks by injecting capital into the biggest state-owned lenders for the second time in six months, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg News reported. Seeking to sustain the flow of credit into the slumping economy, the treasury is considering buying bonds that will be issued mostly by TC Ziraat Bankasi AS and Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are internal. The blueprint is likely to be announced by Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak on Wednesday.

India’s top-performing local corporate bond fund is making another contrarian bet after its decision to buy notes during last year’s liquidity squeeze in the market paid off, Bloomberg News reported. DSP Investment Managers’ corporate bond fund is adding to holdings of debt from non-banks even as the shock defaults by Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd., sometimes called India’s mini-Lehman moment, still hang over the sector’s debt. Those notes offer higher yield premiums than publicly owned companies.

China’s central auditing authority has sounded the alarm on a surge of bad debt at small banks around the country, raising the question of whether Beijing will continue to bail out struggling lenders or eventually allow some to go bankrupt, the Financial Times reported. The National Audit Office said that some banks in Henan province in central China had recorded 40 per cent of their loan books as bad debt by the end of 2018, the first official disclosure in decades of such high rates of toxic assets.

More of India’s smaller banks may become acquisition targets if the regulator gives a nod to the proposed merger of Lakshmi Vilas Bank Ltd. and Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd., according to Credit Suisse Group AG analysts. If approved, the deal would be the first example of a non-bank financial company like Indiabulls Housing merging with a bank, following the 2016 relaxation of Reserve Bank of India rules, Bloomberg News reported.

One of China’s top commodity traders, Tewoo Group, is selling copper at below market rates as it grapples with a liquidity crunch, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The company, which is owned by the local Tianjin government, is offloading some refined copper stocked in bonded zones as it unwinds financing deals with some banks, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the information isn’t public, Bloomberg News reported. The metal is used as collateral in financing agreements or committed assets in so-called repurchase agreements with banks, they said.

Turkish companies are struggling to get off the hamster wheel of debt as foreign borrowings run near record highs, Bloomberg News reported. The reason: a plunge in the lira that has driven up the cost of their obligations in dollars and euros. Banks are being left to carry the burden amid a surge in demand from some of the country’s industrial giants to restructure their liabilities -- on top of a jump in bad loans. Lenders are also pulling back on providing new credit as the financial system comes under increasing pressure from the recession and an inflation rate of almost 20 percent.