A financial creditor can seek to first initiate insolvency proceedings against a corporate guarantor of a company, instead of the company itself, in case the guarantee fails, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has held, Business Standard reported. The corporate insolvency resolution process, thus, can go ahead against the guarantor under Section 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), even without having proceeded with and exhausted all legal remedies against the principal debtor, it has said.

India’s heavily indebted Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) said on Wednesday it has received more than 30 expressions of interest for IL&FS Transportation Networks Ltd’s (ITNL) domestic road business, Reuters reported. “Interest has been received from a mix of strategic and financial players,” IL&FS said in a statement. ITNL is the biggest subsidiary of IL&FS and manages some of the group’s most valuable assets such as road projects.

Just when they were trying to get past their cash-crunch woes, India’s non-bank financiers may find themselves staring at a new problem: a rise in soured debt amid higher funding costs, Bloomberg News reported. That’s the prognosis about shadow lenders by Washington-based Institute of International Finance, which sees support likely from policy makers as part of their efforts to boost credit growth and bolster the economy ahead of federal elections due by May.

Free iPads, rental guarantees and an eye-watering A$100,000 ($72,000) off the price of an apartment are some of the sweeteners on offer from property developers amid the worst housing downturn in Australia for 35 years, the Financial Times reported. National house prices fell 1.3 per cent in December, the largest monthly fall since 1983, which resulted in an annual decline of 6.1 per cent last year.

Macquarie Infrastructure & Real Assets and NTPC Ltd., India’s largest power utility, are among companies interested in buying some of the renewable energy assets of beleaguered shadow financier Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd., people familiar with the matter said. GAIL India Ltd. and Solar Energy Corporation of India have also submitted expression of interest to buy the assets, the people said asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public, Bloomberg News reported.

Essar Global Fund’s decision to repay the last tranche of the secured debt at its group entities could have broader ramifications for Essar Steel, the conglomerate’s steel-making business whose future ownership would be decided by the dedicated bankruptcy court, The Economic Times reported. Some in the legal circles believe the move by Essar Group’s holding company could prompt lenders to consider the group’s last-minute offer to repay Rs 54,389 crore and wrest back the control of the debtladen Essar Steel, currently facing insolvency proceedings.

Turkey’s biggest state-run bank will extend cheap loans to citizens struggling to pay off their credit-card debts, in a populist move designed to boost the economy before local elections in March, Bloomberg News reported. Citizens will be able to borrow from Ziraat Bankasi AS to pay back their card debt to banks, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his party’s group meeting in parliament Tuesday. Ziraat Bank said in a statement it will offer loans for up to two years with a 1.1 percent interest rate per month, less than half the cost of the retail loan rate on its website.

Senior Chinese leaders offered in 2016 to help bail out a Malaysian government fund at the center of a swelling, multibillion-dollar graft scandal, according to minutes from a series of previously undisclosed meetings reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Chinese officials told visiting Malaysians that China would use its influence to try to get the U.S. and other countries to drop their probes of allegations that allies of then-Prime Minister Najib Razak and others plundered the fund known as 1MDB, the minutes show, The Wall Street Journal reported.

India’s central bank is open to infusing “need-based” liquidity into the financial system, Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Monday ahead of a meeting with the shadow banking sector, which has been hit hard by a funding crunch, Reuters reported. Government officials have pressed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) over the past few months to ease lending and capital rules for banks and provide more liquidity to shadow banks.

Reliance Communications has deposited $18.6m at India’s supreme court in a “partial payment” to creditor Ericsson, which is pushing to have its chairman Anil Ambani imprisoned for alleged contempt of court, the Financial Times reported. Last week, the Swedish group filed a petition with India’s supreme court, accusing RCom of breaching a court order to pay $79m in unpaid dues. It alleged that the telecom company had “illegally pocketed” the proceeds of asset sales, instead of transferring funds to creditors.