China’s fast-growing dollar-bond market is facing a fresh test as investors that counted on a type of credit-protection pledge seldom seen elsewhere find out just what those promises actually mean, Bloomberg News reported. So-called keepwell provisions, disproportionately seen in the offshore Chinese debt market the past several years, are a sort of gentleman’s agreement - a commitment to maintain an issuer’s solvency which stops short of a payment guarantee from the parent company. Now, two issuers of debt with keepwell provisions, China Energy Reserve & Chemicals Group Co.

China’s banks, scrambling to adjust to the government’s deleveraging campaign, are likely to add to pressures on the corporate bond market as they shed more of their massive note holdings and de-risk their balance sheets, Bloomberg News reported. Further payment problems are likely in a market that has already seen at least 14 corporate bond defaults this year, according to Logan Wright, Hong Kong-based director at research firm Rhodium Group LLC.

Turkish banks’ shares fell for a fourth day and are on track for the biggest weekly decline in almost two years as Fitch Ratings is said to take some Turkish lenders to rating watch negative, Bloomberg News reported. Fitch Ratings has prepared a report on Turkish banks, according to two people with direct knowledge of the issue and who asked not to be named because it hasn’t been published by Fitch. Report takes some Turkey banks to rating watch negative, according to one of the people.

India’s two-year-old bankruptcy law, which gives creditors more power to restructure troubled companies, is luring more and more offshore investors from as far as Canada to buy the nation’s bad debt, Bloomberg News reported. Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, a Canadian pension fund manager, has made $600 million available to Edelweiss Group for investment in local distressed assets, according to R.K. Bansal, an adviser for Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Co. Hong Kong-based SSG Capital Management Ltd.

Reliance Communications Ltd. soared in Mumbai trading after it settled a payment dispute with the local unit of Ericsson AB, allowing the debt-laden phone operator to proceed with a planned asset sale to Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. and possibly stave off insolvency, Bloomberg News reported. RCom, as the company is known, advanced 6.6 percent to close at 18.65 rupees in Mumbai after jumping as much as 20 percent in early trading on Thursday. Its 6.5% bond maturing in November 2020 rose 4.3 cents on the dollar to 56.55, according to prices compiled by Bloomberg.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious plans to privatise major parts of Indian industry were left badly diminished on Thursday after the deadline for potential bidders to express an interest in Air India passed without a single company doing so, the Financial Times reported. Mr Modi had prioritised selling the highly indebted airline in what would have been India’s biggest ever privatisation and a powerful sign of his commitment to economic reform.

Bondholders led by BlackRock Inc have agreed to inject capital into Quintis Ltd and take it private, rescuing the Australian sandalwood firm after it collapsed in the wake of a short-seller attack, Reuters reported. Between A$125 million and A$175 million ($95 million to $132 million) in capital will be provided and the bondholders will acquire control of the company, administrator McGrathNicol said in a statement. “It is expected that the proposal will be supported by growers, employees and creditors whose rights and long term interests are protected,” the statement said.

Indonesia’s central bank raised interest rates for the second time in as many weeks on Wednesday after its newly-appointed governor called an off-cycle monetary policy meeting, the Financial Times reported. The Bank of Indonesia increased its benchmark seven-day repo rate by 25 basis points to 4.75 per cent, after raising rates for the first time since 2014 in mid-May in a bid to prevent capital flight. In its mid-May statement, the bank highlighted that the move was designed to support the rupiah.

India’s Reliance Communications (RCom) said on Wednesday it expects to complete its asset sale to Reliance Jio Infocomm and Canada’s Brookfield in coming weeks, after the bankruptcy appeals court halted insolvency proceedings against the debt-laden company, Reuters reported. The 181 billion-rupee ($2.7 billion) asset sale by businessman Anil Ambani-controlled RCom includes airwaves, fiber, mobile masts and real estate assets in Delhi and Chennai, the company said in a statement, as it aims to prune its debt pile.

When top Chinese business leaders and officials face charges, they usually have one option: Go quietly. The tycoon at the center of one of China’s biggest cases of financial fraud seems to be taking a different path, the International New York Times reported. A lawyer representing Wu Xiaohui, a businessman who rose to prominence in part through his company’s purchase of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, said Wednesday in a social media post that Mr. Wu would appeal a lengthy prison sentence for bilking investors.