Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings announced on Sunday its first restructuring in six years, done at a time it faces increased challenges from tighter government regulations, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The reshuffle comes as Tencent Holdings, which has seen a hefty fall in market value this year, is facing fresh criticism from analysts and investors unnerved by regulatory roadblocks, a fuzzy overseas strategy and growing debt.
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Resources Per Country
- Afghanistan
- Armenia
- Australia
- Azerbaijan
- Bangladesh
- Brunei
- Cambodia
- China
- Cook Islands
- Cyprus
- Fiji
- Georgia
- Hong Kong
- India
- Indonesia
- Japan
- Kazakhstan
- Kyrgyzstan
- Laos
- Macau
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Micronesia
- Mongolia
- Myanmar
- Nepal
- New Zealand
- North Korea
- Pakistan
- Papua New Guinea
- Philippines
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Sri Lanka
- Taiwan
- Tajikistan
- Thailand
- Turkey
- Uzbekistan
- Vanuatu
- Vietnam
Shareholders in Australia’s big banks shouldn’t get too comfortable. Bank stocks rallied in relief that the interim report from an inquiry into misconduct didn’t contain any specific recommendations. But criticism ran deep as Commissioner Kenneth Hayne lambasted the banks over their culture, conduct, compliance and remuneration practices, Bloomberg News reported. He also took aim at the securities and banking regulators for their timid approach and failure to take court action.
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Troubled Indian shadow bank Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd., whose recent debt defaults sparked concern about contagion in the nation’s financial markets, secured a lifeline after shareholders approved its plans to raise money through debt and equity, Bloomberg News reported. Stockholders green-lit IL&FS’s plans to raise as much as 150 billion rupees ($2.1 billion) through a non-convertible debt issue, hike the firm’s borrowing limit by 40 percent to 350 billion rupees and increase its share capital to enable a rights offering, the company said in a filing.
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In July, Suyash Choudhary warned a liquidity crisis is looming in India and funding costs for companies were set to soar. Now, as investors get to grips with a cash crunch made worse by the debt crisis at a lender, Choudhary, the head of fixed-income funds at IDFC Asset Management Co., says the Reserve Bank of India may go slow in adding to the two rate increases since June, Bloomberg News reported. “Financial conditions have turned tight, and I think the RBI will have to pace incremental tightening at this juncture,” he said in an interview.
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Indian authorities have spent the week containing the collateral damage from a major infrastructure lender struggling to service $12.6 billion in debt, Bloomberg News reported. Next up: Figuring out why the nation’s credit rating agencies didn’t see the crisis coming. IL&FS Group is a vast conglomerate with a complex corporate structure that funds infrastructure projects across the world’s fastest-growing major economy.
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A VTB Capital-led consortium has offered to match ArcelorMittal’s 420 billion rupee ($5.8 billion) bid for Essar Steel India Ltd., heating up the long drawn battle for the biggest steel mill being sold under India’s new bankruptcy law, Bloomberg News reported. Numetal Ltd., the consortium led by VTB, is willing to revise its earlier bid of 370 billion rupees for the 10 million tons a year steel manufacturing unit, Mukul Rohatgi, the lawyer representing the company, told the nation’s top court on Thursday.
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With India’s state-owned banks hamstrung by bad loans, a growing number of non-bank lenders seized the opportunity, using short-term debt funding to fuel breakneck growth in recent years. Now the sector is at the centre of a wave of selling in both bonds and equities, after an unexpected default by a major infrastructure group rattled investors and cast doubt on the credibility of rating agencies’ work, the Financial Times reported.
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Two years after China’s top banking regulator pushed for market-based workouts for defaulted bonds, local authorities are still putting a heavy hand on negotiations, a review of recent episodes shows. The evidence from several of the record number of defaults this year suggests local officials are moving to keep troubled business from failures that could unleash waves of job losses and the attendant social and economic damage, Bloomberg News reported.
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Chinese non-financial corporate debt is rising again as a percentage of gross domestic product following a year and a half of deleveraging from its mid-2016 record, according to new data from the Bank for International Settlements, Bloomberg News reported. The ratio jumped to 164.1 percent in the first quarter of 2018 from 160.3 percent in the final three months of 2017, erasing more than half of the progress Chinese companies had made in reducing debt loads since the ratio topped out at 166.9 percent in the second quarter of 2016, the BIS data, published September 23, show.
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For Asia equity investors in search of volatility, there’s no need to buy U.S. pot stocks. India has its own wild ride, Bloomberg News reported. The turmoil in India’s non-bank finance firms has triggered swings in the nation’s stock market that make the recent moves in U.S. pot-related shares look like a walk on the grass. Volatility in the S&P BSE Finance Index has soared to the highest level in almost two years, with stocks such as Dewan Housing Finance Corp. fluctuating an average 26 percent in the past three sessions, more than the 19 percent move in Tilray Inc.
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