China Energy Reserve & Chemicals Group Co. said it hasn’t paid a $350 million bond that matured earlier this month, in the latest example of China’s deleveraging campaign choking off financing for some companies, Bloomberg News reported. The oil and gas producer, which has $1.8 billion of offshore notes outstanding, cited “tightening in credit conditions” for the default.

Chinese regulators are making progress in their attempts to tame the country’s $10 trillion shadow banking sector, but after a one-year squeeze on the riskiest areas of the industry, there’s still a lengthy battle ahead, Bloomberg News reported. "We’ve had a good beginning to a long journey," said Larry Hu, a Hong Kong-based economist at Macquarie Securities Ltd. "Some components of shadow banking are shrinking and interbank leverage has started to drop.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan finally conceded to his financial lieutenants’ currency-rescue plan, but a look back across recent eleventh-hour rate hikes in emerging markets shows it’s not enough to get the lira back on track, Bloomberg News reported. It took three years for Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina to reap rewards for her ultra-orthodox monetary policies, through an influx of investment and low volatility. Argentina saw immediate payoff for its extreme rate move this week -- of more than double Turkey’s 300 basis-points hike.

Asia-Pacific equities were mostly lower in early trading on Tuesday as the political crisis in Italy worsened, investors favoured government bonds and the yen strengthened, the Financial Times reported. Among the region’s major benchmarks, the Topix index in Tokyo and the Kospi in Seoul each fell 0.6 per cent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 0.5 per cent.

After a nationwide manhunt, Neeraj Singal was finally tracked down and seized by fraud investigators at an upscale New Delhi hotel in 2014. Accused of involvement in the bribing of bankers, a charge Mr Singal denies, the scion of the Bhushan Steel empire was hauled off for questioning, the Financial Times reported. Within days he was released on bail and returned as the controlling shareholder of Bhushan, built by his father from a door hinge producer into one of India’s largest industrial groups.

S&P Global Inc., the financial-information giant, plans to build a stand-alone ratings business in China, bringing it a step closer to expanding its presence in one of the world’s biggest bond markets, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company has notified the Chinese government of a plan to launch an independent credit-ratings firm in the country, an S&P spokesman said Wednesday. A trade deal last year opened up China to U.S. ratings firms. S&P is speaking with regulators on the entrance. Moody’s Corp.

Contagion? Not this time. Developing nations are defying concern that the tumbling Turkish lira and Argentine peso will infect global financial assets, Bloomberg News reported. While pundits including Mark Mobius said the pain for emerging markets isn’t over and Paul Krugman said the current wobble had the whiff of a crisis to it, markets have been far more sanguine. On Thursday, 16 of 24 emerging-market currencies gained as the lira plunged more than 4 percent even after Turkey’s emergency interest-rate hike. Meanwhile, Argentina’s peso extended a two-day slide.

Try as you might, it's difficult to find a more depressing stock market story than Noble Group, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Once Asia’s biggest commodity trader, the Singapore-listed company has left a trail of devastation for investors who bought into Richard Elman’s dream of building a Far East rival to Glencore. From Singapore’s mom and pop investors on the light-touch SGX, to institutional buyers that probably should have known better, all have suffered serious wealth destruction as critics have savaged Noble’s accounting practices.

India’s economic and credit slowdown is revealing the strengths and weaknesses of its banking sector. Roiled by unprecedented frauds and surging bad debt, the nation’s state-run banks have returned the least to investors this year, Bloomberg News reported. However, investors’ belief in the potential of Asia’s No. 3 economy shows in the fact that its newest lenders offer the best returns, and a clutch of private Indian banks are among the world’s most expensive.

Turkey’s banks will likely benefit from Wednesday night’s interest-rate increase, though there will be some pain as well, Bloomberg News reported. That’s the assessment of some analysts after the central bank’s emergency move to halt a run on the lira. While there will be a short-term hit to funding costs and lending margins, banks will be helped as the move stems panic in financial markets, according to Cagdas Dogan, a banking analyst at Istanbul-based BGC Partners Inc.