India should kick-start private investment via policy measures or tax breaks if it does not want to stay stuck at a 7 percent growth rate, Uday Kotak, managing director and chief executive of Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd, told CNBCTV18 in an interview, Reuters reported. “India has the fundamental capacity and we need to create a situation where the ground capacity will be growing at somewhere between 8 and 9 percent,” he said on the sidelines of an event organised by Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.

The Turkish owner of Godiva chocolates and McVitie’s biscuits has stepped off the acquisition trail. After years of global expansion, Yildiz Holding AS is speeding up asset sales to focus on its core business and underpin Turkey’s largest loan restructuring deal, which it struck with lenders last year, Bloomberg News reported. The Istanbul-based food producer plans to seek partners in units including Godiva’s business in Japan and some other Asian markets, while exiting non-core assets such as its mining and brick business.

ArcelorMittal SA, the world’s biggest steelmaker, has bid 48 billion rupees ($673 million) to acquire Essar’s 1200 megawatt power plant in central India, one of the most prized assets in the debt-ridden group’s power portfolio, Reuters reported. The bid for the power plant once again pits ArcelorMittal chief Lakshmi Mittal against the Ruia family, who are already fighting to prevent their flagship steel asset from falling into the hands of the global steel giant.

Another acquisitive Chinese company is wobbling. Less than five years old, China Minsheng Investment Group Corp. has spent more than $4 billion on investments and amassed $34 billion of debt, but recently almost failed to make a bond repayment, Bloomberg News reported. CMIG joins the likes of HNA Group Co. and Anbang Insurance Group Co. in struggling to repay debt after embarking on a spending spree.

Last year marked the deepest deterioration in Asian liquidity conditions since 2008. While it’s nowhere close to over, the worst of the squeeze may have passed, a Bloomberg View reported. The gears of the region’s asset markets could turn more smoothly in the second half of the year. The signals are faint, so they’re easy to miss. In India, shadow banks’ liquidity crunch is still dangerously close to becoming an insolvency crisis for property developers. In China, economists’ forecasts of large-scale monetary stimulus are yet to materialize.

Lenders to Jet Airways India Ltd. proposed a bailout of the beleaguered carrier, potentially paving the way for a revival of the airline that was on the verge of collapse, Bloomberg News reported. Mumbai-based Jet Airways, which needs 85 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) to help it get back on its feet, will be revamped, with banks becoming the biggest shareholders of the company, according to a filing Thursday. The restructuring would involve a mix of debt-to-equity swap, new capital infusion and asset sales, the company said, without elaborating.

The International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) is working with a consultant to prepare a recovery strategy ahead of its privatisation, the head of its supervisory board said. State-run IBA restructured its $3.3 billion in international debt in 2017 after receiving approval from creditors, Reuters reported. “We are currently working with a well-known international consultant company on a business strategy for a recovery of the International Bank and are going to begin its implementation this year,” Shahmar Movsumov said.

China's bad debt managers, whom Beijing hopes to play a key role in resolving financial risks, are in danger of becoming bad credits themselves as the leverage crackdown that fuelled a boom in their business now threatens their own access to funding, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The practice of buying banks' non-performing loans (NPLs) at a discount and recovering them for a profit has grown rapidly in China since 2016.

Prathap C. Reddy and his family, founders of India’s Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd., plan to sell their holdings in an insurance venture with Munich Re AG to repay debt, people with knowledge of the matter said. The family is seeking to sell its entire holding of 41 percent in Apollo Munich Health Insurance Co., for about 12 billion rupees ($170 million) in six months, the people said asking not to be identified as the discussions are private, Bloomberg News reported.

China’s state planning agency will investigate corporate bond issuers’ ability to repay maturing notes, a sign of Beijing’s concern about financial risks amid a slowing economy and tight liquidity that has made refinancing difficult for many borrowers, the Financial Times reported. Chinese bond defaults reached an all-time high last year, and issuers are facing a wave of maturities in 2019. A series of high-profile defaults in recent weeks have shaken market confidence.