The liquidators of Bella Vista Homes have just $28 with which to pay more than $4 million to creditors – unless they can recover money from two former directors and a series of related company transactions, The New Zealand Herald reported. Insolvency practitioners Rhys Cain and Rees Logan released their first report on Wednesday and outlined their plans to recover the millions owed. They have issued a letter of demand to former Bella Vista director and shareholder Danny Cancian, seeking to recover funds from his overdrawn shareholder current account.

A leaked report from a Chinese government-backed think tank has warned of a potential “financial panic” in the world’s second-largest economy, a sign that some members of the nation’s policy elite are growing concerned as market turbulence and trade tensions increase, Bloomberg News reported. Bond defaults, liquidity shortages and the recent plunge in financial markets pose particular dangers at a time of rising U.S.

China’s domestic bonds, denominated in renminbi, have been popular with international investors this year, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. But changes in key market conditions — including an upsurge in corporate defaults and the renminbi’s slide against the US dollar — raises questions over the sustainability of inflows.

Imagine India’s GDP growth had collapsed to 3 percent; inflation was about to hit double digits; exports were tanking; and the country’s twin deficits – in the government’s budget, and in the nation’s current account – were out of control. It’s only when the Reserve Bank of India tries to imagine such a dire scenario for March 2019 that its simulation exercise for bad loans throws up a figure of 17.3 percent of state-run banks’ total assets, a Bloomberg View reported.

Fugitive Indian businessman Vijay Mallya has sought court approvals to sell some frozen assets worth 139 billion rupees ($2 billion), making a fresh attempt to settle bank dues owed by his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, Bloomberg News reported. Mallya and his United Breweries Holdings Ltd. filed an application before a court in the southern Karnataka state on June 22, seeking permission to repay creditors from the proceeds of the sale, according to a statement on Tuesday.

Essar, which owes creditors $7.6 billion, is one of a dozen large debtors that were ordered into bankruptcy court after India’s central bank received additional powers to speed the process of winding down troubled companies, Bloomberg News reported. There are more than 2,500 bankruptcy cases wending their way through India’s notoriously slow legal system. Until the special courts were established by the 2016 Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, bankruptcies could drag on for years.

Asian junk bonds have sold off amid defaults and concerns over refinancing risks, dividing veterans on where the $121 billion market is headed, Bloomberg News reported. Spreads on the region’s high-yield dollar notes have widened to the highest in nearly two years, according to a Bloomberg Barclays index. The threat of a trade war and rising interest rates have added to concerns after recent defaults by China Energy Reserve & Chemicals Group Co. and Hsin Chong Group Holdings Ltd. For investors like Lombard Odier (Singapore), the selloff has increased the securities’ appeal.

A deepening sense of unease is rippling through China’s financial markets. The benchmark Shanghai stock index has tumbled 20 percent in just five months to enter a bear market, Bloomberg News reported. The yuan is heading for its longest losing streak in four years in Hong Kong. Corporate defaults are mounting. There are homegrown reasons for the concern: the nation’s deleveraging campaign is reducing the amount of liquidity available -- threatening growth in the world’s second-largest economy.

South African units of Jindal Steel & Power Ltd. filed for a local form of bankruptcy protection known as business rescue this month, Bloomberg News reported. Jindal Mining SA, Jindal Africa Investments and Eastern Solid Fuels filed notice of the voluntary proceedings on June 12, according to documents posted on Jindal Africa’s website. A spokesman for the company didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment. Jindal Mining SA’s main business is coal production at the Kiepersol mine, according to one of the documents.

Chinese regulators have freed up an extra $100 billion for bank lending in a move financial analysts said could help to reassure investors amid trade tensions with Washington, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. The reduction on Sunday in reserves banks are required to hold was part of a series of such cuts economists had forecast before the dispute with President Donald Trump erupted. But they said the announcement could help to defuse fears a threatened U.S. tariff hike might dampen Chinese economic growth.