India will probably see more bank mergers as digital technology transforms the industry and non-bank financing companies seek to avoid a cash crunch, according to a senior official at the nation’s largest lender, Bloomberg News reported. Finance firms that don’t take deposits “need a stable source of capital and banks can help with that,” said Dinesh Kumar Khara, a managing director at State Bank of India who has overseen about 10 mergers. “Banks also want to expand their liabilities and NBFCs can help with that,” he said in an interview.

Faced with high borrowing costs and a sustained shortage of liquidity in India’s money markets, shadow banks are increasingly pitching bonds with high coupon rates to the public, who may not be aware of the risks they’re taking on, Bloomberg News reported. Still roiling from the shock of defaults at Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd., non-bank financing companies are exploring this relatively expensive funding channel.

In a first, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has constituted an ‘Insolvency Issues Committee’ to examine how it can protect its interest in cases where telecom operators are undergoing insolvency proceedings, BusinessLine reported. The moves comes as two operators – Aircel and Reliance Communications (RCom) – are undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. As per rules under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) rules, DoT is an operational creditor when telecom companies initiate Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP).

Five major stressed power producers are preparing to oppose insolvency proceedings on the grounds that lenders filed petitions against them as per a central bank circular on debt resolution that was recently quashed by the apex court, people familiar with the plans said, The Economic Times reported. The five power projects of Lanco Amarkantak, Avantha Power, KSK Mahanadi, Rattan India Power (Amravati project) and Rattan India Nashik Power (formerly Indiabulls) account for over Rs 50,000 crore of unpaid dues.

With a crucial rescue plan aborted just weeks before its court-approved debt moratorium expires, Hyflux will have until Apr 25 to indicate if it needs more time to keep creditors at bay, CNA reported. However, the beleaguered water treatment firm will need to put together “something fairly tangible” by then to convince the court that it deserves an extended lifeline, said Justice Aedit Abdullah on Thursday (Apr 11) during a case management conference.

The government is soon expected to put in place a framework for insolvency resolution in case of personal guarantors to corporate debtors, and take up the issue of debt resolution in case of proprietorship and partnerships in the second phase, the Indian Express reported. As the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) has already finalised the norms for individual bankruptcy resolution in case of personal guarantors, the government is expected to notify these within a month, sources familiar with the matter said.

Turkey’s biggest financial pledge in 18 years to bolster its banks may not be the silver bullet needed to pull the Middle East’s largest economy out of recession, Bloomberg News reported. The government plans to inject fresh capital into state-owned lenders and oversee the formation of two funds to take on some of the sector’s bad loans, Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak told reporters in Istanbul. To back the effort, the government will issue 28 billion liras ($4.9 billion) of bonds and place them at state banks.

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.