The world’s $164tn debt pile is bigger than at the height of the financial crisis a decade ago, the IMF has warned, sounding the alarm on excessive global borrowing, the Financial Times reported. The fund said the private and public sectors urgently needed to cut debt levels to improve the resilience of the global economy and provide greater firefighting capability if things went wrong. “Fiscal stimulus to support demand is no longer the priority,” the IMF said on Wednesday in a report published at its spring meetings in Washington.

To many economists, the solution to India’s bad-loan crisis appears as obvious as the problem: Privatize state-owned banks, which have racked up billions more in soured loans and performed much worse than their private-sector counterparts. Yet, unless the government first strengthens its ability to supervise all banks, public and private, selling some of them off will be slim guarantee against another crisis, a Bloomberg View reported. One can understand the urge to privatize. A long-mooted bankruptcy law finally passed last year allows any single creditor to initiate the bankruptcy process.

Two Chinese groups have renewed their interest in buying a majority stake in National Insurance, Greece’s largest insurer, after a €718m sale agreed with Calamos-Exin, a US-Dutch partnership, collapsed last month, the Financial Times reported. Fosun Investment and Gonbao Investment, the second- and third-ranked bidders, “have returned to the reopened sale process” said one source close to the situation.

Vedanta Ltd said on Tuesday it got approval from India's designated court for bankruptcy cases to acquire Electrosteel Steels Ltd. Electrosteel is the first to get approval from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), among a dozen of the country's biggest loan defaulters which were pushed to bankruptcy proceedings last year, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. A Vedanta Ltd unit will buy debt-ridden Electrosteel for 18.05 billion rupees ($274.96 million) and provide additional funds worth 35.15 billion rupees, the company said in a statement.

Noble Group improved the terms of its controversial $3.4 billion debt restructuring deal and won the support of its biggest shareholder as the commodity trader seeks to complete the vital transaction, Reuters reported. Singapore-listed Noble’s debt-for-equity swap has already won the backing of more than 83 percent of the holders of its senior debt but it also needs a majority of its shareholders to approve the restructuring. “The revised structure granting shareholders 15 percent equity in New Noble has my full support,” Noble founder Richard Elman said in Noble’s statement on Monday.

Chinese prosecutors indicted the country’s former chief insurance regulator on charges of abusing his power and taking bribes, a year after he was fired amid concerns the industry’s sizzling expansion had saddled the financial system with risk, The Wall Street Journal reported. Xiang Junbo, whose firing last April underscored the severity of a shake-up in China’s financial sector, faces charges that also include using his positions to promote the interests of others, according to a statement from the nation’s top prosecutors office Monday. Specifics of the allegations against Mr.

Momentum in the global economy has peaked and risks ranging from higher inflation to trade disputes and debt appear likely to taint prospects for 2018, according to the tracking index compiled by the Brookings Institution think-tank and the Financial Times. The latest update to the index shows that forces contributing to growth remain strong but have levelled off below last year’s peak, while financial markets suggest more challenging times ahead, the Financial Times reported.

Oaktree Capital Group LLC, one of the world’s largest distressed debt investors, is eyeing India as a key market as the nation overhauls its bankruptcy rules and banks battle with a historic bad debt clean-up, Bloomberg News reported. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see India as another engine of growth maybe in the next three to five years,” said Jay Wintrob, chief executive officer at the Los Angeles-based firm, in an interview in Hong Kong.

China will further overhaul its bloated state enterprises and push for mergers in sectors such as power and coal, which are plagued by zombie firms, bankruptcy and debt defaults, according to the head of the agency that oversees state assets valued at $26 trillion, Bloomberg News reported. "Some of the central state-owned enterprises in certain industries are too fragmented and have low efficiency," said Xiao Yaqing, chairman of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, referring to SOEs directly regulated by the central government.

Creditors of India's Monnet Ispat and Energy Ltd have approved a joint bid here from AION Investments and JSW Steel to take over the bankrupt firm, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday. Monnet Ispat is among India's 12 biggest loan defaulters here, which were pushed into bankruptcy last year, as part of the country's new bankruptcy law aimed at cutting close to $150 billion of accumulated soured loans, Reuters reported.