Executives from Chinese companies specialising in offering consumers small, easy-to-get loans became something of a fixture on Wall Street this year, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Led by companies such as Qudian Inc and PPDAI Group Inc, the Chinese micro-lenders raised $1.2 billion with splashy U.S. listings, cashing in on a boom in borrowing by consumers in China with little access to traditional banks.

Moves to sort out India’s $207 billion of bad loans may have eased one threat hanging over executives of state-owned banks: the danger they could be thrown in jail if a future generation of politicians in New Delhi decides they have sold off assets on the cheap. That’s because the new bankruptcy courts set up by the government to handle troubled companies create a transparent process for pricing the assets and writing down their loans, according to P K Gupta, a managing director of State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, Bloomberg News reported.

Debt-laden Indian wireless carrier Reliance Communications (RCom) on Thursday said that a majority of its 31 creditor banks have decided to oppose China Development Bank’s (CDB) insolvency petition against the company, Reuters reported. After a meeting on Wednesday, the lenders have named Indian law firm J. Sagar Associates as their legal counsel to oppose the CDB petition, RCom said in a statement. CDB said it was unable to make immediate comment.

India’s Reliance Communications Ltd., which earlier this month defaulted on dollar notes, told bondholders that they would be treated the same as bank lenders in terms of their ability to recover funds, according to Citigroup Inc. The mobile phone operator controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, whose failure to pay interest on the dollar notes comes as a high-profile test of India’s new bankruptcy laws, held the call Monday, Citigroup said in a note to clients dated Nov. 28.

According to one of India’s most respected bankers, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity -- a mammoth sale of distressed assets, some $40 billion in the first round, Bloomberg News reported in a commentary. Much could go wrong, of course, especially given that so many powerful interests have so much money at stake in the process. Fortunately, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, which has stumbled in some of its biggest policy moves recently, appears to be handling this particular challenge with both agility and a sense of urgency.

Shares in India’s Reliance Communications fell by as much as 9.4 per cent on Tuesday morning following reports that the troubled telecom group’s largest creditor, China Development Bank, has launched action against it under India’s new insolvency law, the Financial Times reported. In a statement on Monday evening, RCom – controlled by tycoon Anil Ambani – had denied any knowledge of the reported petition, which could force it into liquidation if it fails to satisfy creditor demands.

China Huishan Dairy Holdings, burdened by billions of dollars worth of debt, said on Tuesday its creditors had filed a plea in a local court for bankruptcy restructuring against two if its wholly-owned subsidiaries, Reuters reported. The application was filed on Tuesday against Huishan Dairy China Co Ltd and Liaoning Huishan Dairy Group Shenyang Co Ltd by the embattled company’s onshore creditors, it said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

Noble Group Ltd.’s long-time foe Iceberg Research made a fresh attack on the embattled commodity trader on Tuesday, saying that its balance sheet may still mask problems and that the company’s bid to restructure its obligations won’t lead to a turnaround, Bloomberg News reported. “The problem with this company is not only that assets have been wildly overvalued. Some liabilities have probably been drastically undervalued,” Iceberg said in an open letter to the creditors of the Hong Kong-based company.

Chinese banks have been lending more to corporations and households and less to borrowers in the interbank market as the regulatory screws have tightened. But this back-to-basics push may prove unsustainable. Even if much of the new lending were not for speculative purposes, restrictions are growing on the wholesale funding market that allows the banks to keep the credit flowing, the Financial Times reported. As this drives market rates higher, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) is under pressure to contain default risks in the industrial base.

Noble Group, the commodity trader wrestling with a $3.5bn debt pile, has continued its fire sale of assets, offloading an ethanol plant in Indiana for a loss, the Financial Times reported. The Singapore-listed company on Monday announced a deal to sell North Americas South Bend Ethanol (NASBE) business to Zeeland, a privately-owned US group, for just $12.5m – or $17m including inventories and working capital. At the end of September, NASBE was carried in Noble’s books at a valuation of just over $80m.