Soon after succeeding his brother at the helm of Indian construction group Lanco, L Madhusudhan Rao spotted an opportunity that looked too good to miss. India’s 2003 Electricity Act was a landmark in the liberalising reform drive that began a decade before, turbocharging the coal-fired power sector by abolishing a burdensome licensing regime, the Financial Times reported. Mr Rao’s Lanco was quick to take advantage. Over the next few years, it borrowed heavily to set up a string of power plants scattered across the nation. Lanco was far from alone.

Telstra Corp. plans to cut 8,000 jobs, sell assets and potentially spin off a new infrastructure business in a make-or-break attempt to fend off competition, Bloomberg News reported. The stock tumbled. Australia’s former phone monopoly, which has lost more than half its market value since early 2015, said it will almost double its cost-cutting program. An asset carve-off will raise as much as to A$2 billion, and one in four executive and middle management roles will go over the the next three years. “We are now at a tipping point,” Chief Executive Officer Andrew Penn said in a statement.

A bruising trade fight with the U.S. lands at a difficult time for China as its economy contends with rising headwinds, constraining Chinese President Xi Jinping’s options, The Wall Street Journal reported. While Chinese officials have been bracing for a trade war for months—promising to match the Trump administration measure for measure—signs are rising that China’s recent economic expansion is ebbing, from weakening investment and household consumption to increasing corporate defaults, in part due to a key Xi initiative to contain debt and fend off financial risks.

In a stock market where investors are used to being disappointed, Tuesday’s plunge still shocked, Bloomberg News reported. China’s benchmark equity gauge sank almost 5 percent at one point and by the close, the escalating tensions with the U.S. had sent 1,023 stocks down by the daily 10 percent limit -- or more than one in four. Greasing the losses was the Shanghai Composite Index’s slide below 3,000, a level previously breached during market crashes in 2015 and 2016.

There have been high-profile insolvencies of many real estate and housing development companies across the country, ZeeBiz reported. Scores of homebuyers, particularly in NCR, have some relief as now they will be treated as financial creditors. Homebuyers are recognised as financial creditors under the insolvency law, with the government promulgating an ordinance. President Ram Nath Kovind gave his assent to promulgate the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Ordinance, 2018 last week. What are the next steps to take? How do you protect your financial interest?

Noble Group Ltd. suspended its shares in Singapore on Monday pending an announcement, as efforts to get shareholder agreement on its controversial $3.5 billion debt restructuring plan drag on longer than expected, Bloomberg News reported. The stock fell to a record low of 5 Singapore cents last week before closing at 5.4 cents on Thursday prior to a public holiday. Once Asia’s largest commodity trader, the company has seen its market value shrink to about $50 million from more than $10 billion in 2010.

A 200 basis-point increase in interest rates could spark a sharp rise in the proportion of emerging market corporate debt issues at risk of default, with Brazilian and Indian firms most vulnerable, a report from McKinsey Global Institute showed. Following a decade of loose monetary policy and historically low interest rates aimed at boosting economic growth after the 2008-9 financial crisis, global central banks including the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are either raising interest rates or signalling an end to accommodative policies, Reuters reported.

China’s top leaders have agreed to help debt-laden conglomerate HNA Group Co raise funds, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. A senior official at the People's Bank of China, on Tuesday, led a meeting with three regulators, the Hainan provincial government, HNA's co-chairman Chen Feng and the company's biggest creditor, asking the attendees to support HNA's future bond issues, Reuters reported on a Bloomberg News story.

Bankrupt Adhunik Metaliks has received an additional 20 days to complete the ongoing insolvency resolution process, the Financial Express reported. The Kolkata bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Friday ordered exclusion of 20 days from the mandated 270-day deadline under the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) for the company, the flagship of the Adhunik Group.

MK Shrawat, a judicial member of the National Company Law Tribunal, Mumbai bench has permitted a promoter of an insolvent company to do what the amended Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 explicitly disallows, Bloomberg Quint reported. Were his ruling to apply widely, the Ruias could bid for Essar Steel Ltd., Singhals for Bhushan Power and Steel Ltd., and Manoj Gaur would be eligible to submit a resolution plan for his family-owned Jaypee Infratech Ltd.. Section 29A of the IBC specifically bars such promoters from bidding for their companies.