Chinese corporate bond defaults will likely continue to rise next year due to daunting refinancing costs, with defaults expected to concentrate on the country’s cash-starved private sector, Fitch Ratings said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Availability of credit for firms to refinance their borrowings remains tight despite the central bank’s monetary policy easing steps, as commercial banks continue to be cautious in lending to private companies and non-strategic, financially wobbly state-owned enterprises (SOEs), Fitch said.

Top lender State Bank of India said on Tuesday it is stepping up its target to buy “good quality” asset portfolios from non-banking financial companies (NBFC), Reuters reported. India’s NBFC sector has been in the spotlight after IL&FS, a major infrastructure financing and construction company, defaulted on a string of debt obligations in recent weeks triggering wider concerns about risks in the country’s financial sector. SBI said it believes that there is a “good opportunity” to expand its loan portfolio at “attractive rates”.

Chinese conglomerate HNA Group has put up for sale property assets worth at least $11 billion, according to documents seen by Reuters, accelerating a push to cut its large debt and restructure, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Two sets of documents reviewed by Reuters listed more than 80 assets that HNA has either put up for sale or intends to sell, including hotels, commercial and residential buildings. They are mostly within China, with the bulk of them located in Hainan Island, where HNA is headquartered.

Sri Lanka plans to put two state-owned hotel companies up for sale within the next six months in a sale that could raise $500 million for the island nation as it seeks to bolster its finances, the finance minister said on Tuesday. Sri Lanka faces repayments on expensive infrastructure foreign loans starting this year and already has a hefty debt burden, while its rupee currency has plumbed record lows, Reuters reported. “We’re going through the legal hoops of preparing (the sales),” State Minister of Finance Eran Wickramaratne said in an interview.

India’s top court has set new norms for the country’s bankruptcy law in an attempt to speed up the resolution of billions of dollars worth of soured loans weighing down banks, Bloomberg News reported. The Supreme Court on Thursday set mandatory timelines for the various stages of the insolvency resolution process, which the law says must be concluded in 270 days, and imposed restrictions on when and why the process can be appealed or stalled.

Xinjiang Production Construction 6th Shi State-owned Assets Management is an agricultural trader and producer that traces its history to Chairman Mao’s efforts to develop China’s far-flung frontiers. It is also emblematic of the difficulties facing the country’s debt-ridden local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) as China’s central authorities attempt to convince investors that the bonds can default, according to HSBC, Bloomberg News reported. The company missed payment on a yuan-denominated issue in August, only to fully repay two days later.

Singapore is giving liquidators of insolvent companies a new tool to retrieve funds for bondholders and other creditors, Bloomberg News reported. Court-appointed managers will now be able to seek funding from investors unrelated to the case to pay the cost of pursuing claims, in exchange for part of the proceeds. That change came under the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act, which was passed by lawmakers on Oct. 1.

Hyflux Ltd., the embattled Singapore water-treatment and power company, is in advanced talks with at least two potential investors about taking a strategic equity stake in the group as part of a restructuring plan, Bloomberg News reported. The discussions with these investors are taking place concurrently with efforts to sell its desalination plant known as Tuaspring, its legal adviser WongPartnership LLP said in an update during a case management hearing in court Monday. Hyflux has an Oct. 15 deadline to sell the plant, which is Southeast Asia’s biggest.

History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Jim Leaviss of Bond Vigilantes has dug out his missives in the months before Lehman Brothers imploded in 2008, and found some ominous similarities, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. The market was obsessing about oil prices, then on their way to $140 a barrel, while the European Central Bank was tightening monetary policy. All that is needed for a hat-trick today, says Mr Leaviss, is a “credit accident”, and for good measure, he notes that the biggest difference between then and now is the level of debt.