China’s banking and insurance regulator has issued draft rules outlining tougher norms for risk assessment of banks, as part of Beijing’s efforts to rein in financial risks, The Wall Street Journal reported. According to the draft rules released by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission on Tuesday, banks will have to recognize not only nonperforming loans but also defaulted bonds, interbank assets and other investment as nonperforming assets.

South Korea needs another economic overhaul like the one following the International Monetary Fund bailout in the late-1990s to stay competitive globally, according to a major global restructuring consulting firm, Bloomberg News reported. It’s as if Asia’s fourth-largest economy is being squeezed with a nutcracker, with China catching up to Korea and overtaking it in some sectors, while Japan is regaining its competitiveness as the economy recovers and it comes up with innovative technologies, said Yung Chung, Seoul-based managing director of AlixPartners LLP.

About 13 percent of corporate insolvency resolution processes (CIRPs) until the end of March 2019 were resolved, while 53 percent cases ended in liquidation, according to data from the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI), moneycontrol.com reported. Average realisation by financial creditors as a share of claims was only 43 percent. In its report, the IBBI said 359 cases had been admitted for corporate insolvency. Of this, the resolution plan for 14 was approved while 73 went into liquidation in the January-March quarter.

In its first major acquisition, Yoga guru Baba Ramdev-led Patanjali Ayurved walked away with debt-ridden edible oil firm Ruchi Soya with a bid of Rs 4,325 crore, sources said. Ruchi Soya has a total debt of about Rs 12,000 crore, Firstpost reported. When contacted, Patanjali confirmed the development, a PTI report said. "We are informed about the development. Voting has gone in our favour," Patanjali Ayurved spokesperson S K Tijarawala said. "Tomorrow they would hand over the result to us and then we would proceed further," he added.

SoftBank Group Corp. is in talks to invest about $230 million in Brazilian online lender Creditas as the firm expands investments in Latin America, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News reported. SoftBank is planning to do the deal via a joint investment from its Vision Fund and newly created Innovation Fund, according to the people, who asked not to be identified as the details aren’t public. No final decisions have been made, and SoftBank may still decide against the transaction, they said. SoftBank and Creditas declined to comment.

An Indian appellate tribunal has lifted a stay on insolvency proceedings against business tycoon Anil Ambani’s debt-laden Reliance Communications, the Economic Times reported on Tuesday. The decision by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) could potentially force Sweden’s Ericsson to return 5.5 billion Indian rupees ($79.06 million) in dues and interest that RCom paid the telecoms equipment maker last month, Reuters reported.

In a bid to step up its efforts to control non-performing assets (NPAs), the State Bank of India (SBI) is hiring more bankruptcy and legal firms to strengthen its stressed assets team to handle cases of above Rs 100 crore under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), Kerala News reported. "The bank seeks to empanel advocates/law firms for handling cases of above Rs 100 crore," the SBI said. The SBI is currently in the process of examining the applications. The bank has 20 stressed asset management branches across the country which report to its central stressed asset resolution vertical.

Beijing has called on banks to increase access to consumer finance in an effort to boost retail spending and bolster the economy. Many banks are issuing more credit cards - an extra 98 million last year - as well as marketing new types of cards and bumping up credit limits. But the surge in consumer lending has been accompanied by a rise in bad debts, with credit card delinquencies up 19 percent to 79 billion yuan ($11.7 billion) last year, 10 times the level in 2010, central bank data shows, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

One of China’s largest listed drugmakers said it overstated cash holdings by $4.4 billion, sending its shares and bonds tumbling and heightening concerns about the quality of accounting in a country that has become a fast-growing part of global investment portfolios, Bloomberg News reported. Kangmei Pharmaceutical Co., a producer of traditional Chinese medicines, disclosed what it described as an accounting “error” in an exchange filing on Tuesday, about four months after telling investors that it was being investigated by regulators.

A delegation from a leading Chinese shipbuilding company has arrived in Croatia for talks about a possible investment in the country’s largest shipbuilder Uljanik, which is struggling to avoid bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Officials from the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) met Croatia’s Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and his economic team on Monday and will visit Uljanik’s docks in the northern Adriatic later this week. “After the visit to the docks we will give full and serious consideration to this matter,” CSIC’s Chief Executive Hu Wenming told reporters.