China is zooming to a record year of corporate-bond defaults, with the 2018 total already more than three-quarters of the previous high even before an expected economic slowdown bites, Bloomberg News reported. Chinese companies have reneged on about 16.5 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) of public bond payments so far this year, compared with the high of 20.7 billion yuan seen in all of 2016, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Strains are set to get worse if the trends of credit-rating companies are anything to go by -- agencies including Dagong Global Rating Co.

Deutsche Bank AG, which is in the throes of a global restructuring involving thousands of job cuts, is zeroing in on an Asian market where an unprecedented bad-loan clean-up offers the potential for a credit bonanza, Bloomberg News reported. In India, where bankruptcy law changes have injected urgency into efforts to restructure $210 billion of stressed assets, Deutsche Bank sees an opportunity to generate outsized returns by refinancing and trading debt, according to Amit Khattar, Asia-Pacific co-head of global credit trading. Khattar is considering adding to his team.

Hundreds of companies are headed for bankruptcy proceedings in India, and that’s a good thing. A new bankruptcy code sets a tight timetable for a defaulting company to deal with its debt: If it doesn’t come up with a solution in nine months, the company is liquidated, The Wall Street Journal reported. In May, Bhushan Steel Ltd. became the first of a group of large defaulters pushed into the bankruptcy court by the central bank to be resolved under the new rules. It was sold for $5.2 billion, and creditors recovered almost two-thirds of what they were owed.

China’s manufacturing growth inched lower in June, according to an independent gauge, the Financial Times reported. The Caixin-Markit China manufacturing purchasing managers’ index came in at 51 last month, still above the 50-point mark delineating growth from contraction but down 0.1 points from May’s level. The gauge, which concentrates on smaller and private companies, stood a half a point below its official counterpart, which is focused on larger and state-owned manufacturers and dropped 0.4 points in June.

The liquidators of Bella Vista Homes have just $28 with which to pay more than $4 million to creditors – unless they can recover money from two former directors and a series of related company transactions, The New Zealand Herald reported. Insolvency practitioners Rhys Cain and Rees Logan released their first report on Wednesday and outlined their plans to recover the millions owed. They have issued a letter of demand to former Bella Vista director and shareholder Danny Cancian, seeking to recover funds from his overdrawn shareholder current account.

A Chinese company in a remote area near Tibet has had a dizzying month in the credit market, underscoring broader concerns about debt loads at local borrowers, Bloomberg News reported. Notes from Qinghai Provincial Investment Group Co. due later this year surged by a record on Wednesday after Bloomberg News reported that the firm plans to repay the securities. The bonds had tumbled to record lows just last week after S&P Global Ratings said the company’s short-term debt totals more than six times cash and that it lacks a plan to refinance the notes.

China’s top economic planning body has told the country’s heavily indebted property companies to curb their issuance of dollar-denominated bonds, a sign of Beijing’s concern about the side effects of the yuan’s recent slide, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a statement late Wednesday, the National Development and Reform Commission said it would ban property companies from selling bonds outside China, unless the proceeds were used to repay maturing debt or to prevent defaults.

A leaked report from a Chinese government-backed think tank has warned of a potential “financial panic” in the world’s second-largest economy, a sign that some members of the nation’s policy elite are growing concerned as market turbulence and trade tensions increase, Bloomberg News reported. Bond defaults, liquidity shortages and the recent plunge in financial markets pose particular dangers at a time of rising U.S.

China’s domestic bonds, denominated in renminbi, have been popular with international investors this year, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. But changes in key market conditions — including an upsurge in corporate defaults and the renminbi’s slide against the US dollar — raises questions over the sustainability of inflows.

Imagine India’s GDP growth had collapsed to 3 percent; inflation was about to hit double digits; exports were tanking; and the country’s twin deficits – in the government’s budget, and in the nation’s current account – were out of control. It’s only when the Reserve Bank of India tries to imagine such a dire scenario for March 2019 that its simulation exercise for bad loans throws up a figure of 17.3 percent of state-run banks’ total assets, a Bloomberg View reported.