Asia Pacific

China’s insurance regulators are raising alarms about risks in the industry, warning that aggressive stock buying by insurers and sales of high-return products could damage the country’s financial system, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The China Insurance Regulatory Commission has issued at least six statements on risk control since late November, including a demand for better disclosure and limits on the size of high-return products.

Chinese corporate defaults will likely spread next year as borrowing costs climb, financial companies surveyed by Bloomberg said yesterday. All 22 bond traders, analysts and others surveyed forecast China’s corporate default rate will rise in 2016, while over 70 percent expect the extra yield on corporate notes to increase. The premium on five-year AA rated company securities over government notes has risen to 173 basis points after plunging to an eight-year low of 169.2 basis points last month.

Faced with sluggish domestic growth, Japan’s megabanks are expanding their role in financing global mergers and acquisitions, which hit a record level this year, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Japanese banks have long ranked among the world’s top cross-border lenders, and have lent many billions of dollars to Japanese companies also seeking growth abroad through acquisitions. Now the banks are increasingly financing deals that don't involve their compatriot companies.

Thailand’s newly-minted central bank governor said Monday that the country’s economy is entering a difficult transition, and that he stands ready to tailor the bank’s policies to support more growth while strictly managing price pressures, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

China Great Wall Asset Management Corp. said today that two state entities will become investors and that it will seek more investors to pave the way for an eventual initial public offering, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The asset-management company--one of four Chinese financial institutions known as “bad banks” for buying up sour loans--said that China’s National Social Security Fund and China Life Insurance will buy unspecified stakes in the firm. It didn’t disclose details.

Georgia’s prime minister announced his resignation yesterday without explaining his reasons, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Irakli Garibashvili is an ally of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose Georgian Dream party routed supporters of former President Mikheil Saakashvili in a 2012 election. He has served as prime minister of the former Soviet nation since November 2013. Georgian media had speculated that Garibashvili would step down to focus all his energy on the campaign for Georgian Dream in parliamentary elections next November.

The Bank of Japan still has policy options to continue its unprecedented monetary easing, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said in an interview days after the central bank announced it wouldn’t expand its main stimulus target, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. "I think they still have policies they can pursue," Suga said yesterday when asked about concerns the program could be reaching its limits.

Loan growth at Indian banks slowed in the six months through September while bad loans rose, signaling increased risks to lenders, the Reserve Bank of India said in a report, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. "Risks to the banking sector increased due to deteriorating asset quality, lower soundness and sluggish profitability,” the RBI, which is also the industry’s regulator, said in a report yesterday. Credit growth slowed to 9.4 percent in the period from 9.7 percent at the end of March, the central bank said.

China’s central bank said that it would extend the yuan’s trading hours in the mainland market starting next month, in a much-anticipated move aimed at increasing the Chinese currency’s global appeal, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The People’s Bank of China said that beginning on Jan. 4, the hours for buying and selling the yuan on the mainland will be extended to 11:30 p.m. local time, from the current 4:30 p.m.

National Bank of Greece said yesterday that it had agreed to sell a majority stake in Finansbank of Turkey to Qatar National Bank for 2.75 billion euros, or about $3 billion, the New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. The Greek bank began exploring “strategic options” for its Turkish business last year after the European Central Bank identified a capital shortfall at National Bank of Greece and at other Greek lenders.