Indian billionaire Ajay Piramal’s home finance firm is set to tap overseas markets for funds, as hurdles mount for such non-bank lenders to raise money at home after landmark defaults by IL&FS group, Bloomberg News reported. The tycoon’s Piramal Capital & Housing Finance, which provides services including mortgages to individuals and real estate financing, is firming up plans to raise "sufficient capital" through external commercial borrowings and bond markets.

In a sign of a mounting policy struggle between India’s central bank and the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a top bank official warned on Friday that undermining a central bank’s independence could be “potentially catastrophic,” Reuters reported. The comments by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor Viral Acharya showed that the central bank is pushing back hard against government pressure to relax its policies and reduce its powers ahead of a general election due by next May, and as Indian financial markets have been dropping in recent weeks.

Chinese equities have already lost $3 trillion in market value since January, and hopes for better days ahead are fading, Bloomberg News reported. Anyone counting on a breather in this year’s final stretch got slapped with another 7.9 percent drop for the Shanghai Composite Index so far in October. That sets the gauge up for one of its worst annual performances ever, behind a 65 percent meltdown at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008, and nearing the 22 percent slumps seen in 2011 and 1994. China ranks among the world’s worst places to own shares in 2018.

China’s economic growth continued to slow in October, a period in which the trade conflict with the U.S. has intensified and policy makers have stepped up support for businesses, Bloomberg News reported. That’s the signal from a Bloomberg Economics gauge aggregating the earliest-available indicators on business conditions and market sentiment. The government effort to stabilize the mood among executives and investors hasn’t been effective yet.

Creditors of India’s bankrupt Essar Steel have accepted an offer from ArcelorMittal, the global steel giant said on Friday, in a major step towards its efforts to establish a meaningful presence in India, the Financial Times reported. The announcement came a day after Essar’s founding Ruia family offered to pay off the company’s entire outstanding debt of Rs543bn ($7.4bn), in a last-ditch attempt to pull the company out of the insolvency proceedings and halt the sale by creditors.

Turkey’s central bank is readying itself for a key policy meeting on Thursday that could disrupt the fragile stability of the country’s currency following months of turbulence, the Financial Times reported. While the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey is expected to follow up September’s dramatic interest rate rise — when it hiked the benchmark lending rate by 6.25 percentage points to stem a developing lira crisis — by keeping rates on hold, the meeting is nonetheless a test of the bank’s credibility.

India’s second-oldest mutual fund has grown wary on non-banking financial companies after landmark defaults by IL&FS group fueled a cash crunch in the sector, Bloomberg News reported. Canara Robeco Asset Management is exercising caution on investments in short-term debt issued by NBFCs, as the fallout from Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. adds to strains caused by asset-liability mismatches. The company is a joint venture between Canara Bank and Netherlands-based asset manager Robeco.

China’s brokers and banks account for more than half the exposure to loans backed by company shares, a key source of risk as the country’s stock market keeps sliding, Bloomberg News reported. About 4.45 trillion yuan ($640 billion) of shares were pledged as collateral in China’s $5.4 trillion equity market as of Oct. 18, according to Chengdu-based research firm PY Standard. Banks and securities firms have extended more than half of that debt. If stock values continue falling, lenders may be forced to offload more shares, perpetuating a vicious spiral.

India’s tight money conditions and fears of a contagion following a debt crisis at a local lender dented demand and put a muzzle on animal spirits in the world’s fastest-growing major economy, Bloomberg News reported. Economic growth in the July-September quarter may have retreated from the 8 percent plus expansion in the three months ended June as consumption cooled, a slew of high-frequency data show.

ScS Group said on Thursday it would stop selling its sofas and carpets at House of Fraser stores from January, saying the partnership had ceased to be beneficial since billionaire Mike Ashley bought the collapsed department store group, Reuters reported. Sports Direct, the British sportswear retailer controlled by Ashley, snapped up House of Fraser and its 58 stores from administrators for 90 million pounds ($116 million) in August.