Shareholders in Australia’s big banks shouldn’t get too comfortable. Bank stocks rallied in relief that the interim report from an inquiry into misconduct didn’t contain any specific recommendations. But criticism ran deep as Commissioner Kenneth Hayne lambasted the banks over their culture, conduct, compliance and remuneration practices, Bloomberg News reported. He also took aim at the securities and banking regulators for their timid approach and failure to take court action.

Indian authorities have spent the week containing the collateral damage from a major infrastructure lender struggling to service $12.6 billion in debt, Bloomberg News reported. Next up: Figuring out why the nation’s credit rating agencies didn’t see the crisis coming. IL&FS Group is a vast conglomerate with a complex corporate structure that funds infrastructure projects across the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

A VTB Capital-led consortium has offered to match ArcelorMittal’s 420 billion rupee ($5.8 billion) bid for Essar Steel India Ltd., heating up the long drawn battle for the biggest steel mill being sold under India’s new bankruptcy law, Bloomberg News reported. Numetal Ltd., the consortium led by VTB, is willing to revise its earlier bid of 370 billion rupees for the 10 million tons a year steel manufacturing unit, Mukul Rohatgi, the lawyer representing the company, told the nation’s top court on Thursday.

With India’s state-owned banks hamstrung by bad loans, a growing number of non-bank lenders seized the opportunity, using short-term debt funding to fuel breakneck growth in recent years. Now the sector is at the centre of a wave of selling in both bonds and equities, after an unexpected default by a major infrastructure group rattled investors and cast doubt on the credibility of rating agencies’ work, the Financial Times reported.

Two years after China’s top banking regulator pushed for market-based workouts for defaulted bonds, local authorities are still putting a heavy hand on negotiations, a review of recent episodes shows. The evidence from several of the record number of defaults this year suggests local officials are moving to keep troubled business from failures that could unleash waves of job losses and the attendant social and economic damage, Bloomberg News reported.

For Asia equity investors in search of volatility, there’s no need to buy U.S. pot stocks. India has its own wild ride, Bloomberg News reported. The turmoil in India’s non-bank finance firms has triggered swings in the nation’s stock market that make the recent moves in U.S. pot-related shares look like a walk on the grass. Volatility in the S&P BSE Finance Index has soared to the highest level in almost two years, with stocks such as Dewan Housing Finance Corp. fluctuating an average 26 percent in the past three sessions, more than the 19 percent move in Tilray Inc.

Chinese non-financial corporate debt is rising again as a percentage of gross domestic product following a year and a half of deleveraging from its mid-2016 record, according to new data from the Bank for International Settlements, Bloomberg News reported. The ratio jumped to 164.1 percent in the first quarter of 2018 from 160.3 percent in the final three months of 2017, erasing more than half of the progress Chinese companies had made in reducing debt loads since the ratio topped out at 166.9 percent in the second quarter of 2016, the BIS data, published September 23, show.

A creditor is seeking to push India’s troubled Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. into insolvency, risking regulators’ efforts to calm financial markets and the group’s attempts to independently restructure its borrowings, Bloomberg News reported. Small Industries Development Bank of India on Tuesday filed an insolvency application against IL&FS and its unit at the National Company Law Tribunal in Mumbai, people familiar with the matter said. Separately, IL&FS’s biggest shareholder, Life Insurance Corp.

India’s finance ministry wants the central bank to consider more steps to improve liquidity in the system, including reducing the amount of funds banks must set aside with it, a senior ministry official said on Tuesday, amid a bubbling credit crunch in the Indian shadow banking industry, Reuters reported. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) could also explore buying more bonds from the open market and open a special window for mutual funds to inject liquidity, the official told reporters.

Egyptian officials plan to launch Asian and European tours starting in the week after next to market international bonds, which will be offered when the time is right, Finance Minister Mohamed Maait said on Tuesday. Egypt plans to issue Eurobonds worth about $5 billion in the coming months, Reuters reported. “The week after next, we will start promotional tours in the Asian markets, then Europe in preparation for issuing Eurobonds bonds,” Maait said at a business event in Cairo.