A deepening sense of unease is rippling through China’s financial markets. The benchmark Shanghai stock index has tumbled 20 percent in just five months to enter a bear market, Bloomberg News reported. The yuan is heading for its longest losing streak in four years in Hong Kong. Corporate defaults are mounting. There are homegrown reasons for the concern: the nation’s deleveraging campaign is reducing the amount of liquidity available -- threatening growth in the world’s second-largest economy.

South African units of Jindal Steel & Power Ltd. filed for a local form of bankruptcy protection known as business rescue this month, Bloomberg News reported. Jindal Mining SA, Jindal Africa Investments and Eastern Solid Fuels filed notice of the voluntary proceedings on June 12, according to documents posted on Jindal Africa’s website. A spokesman for the company didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment. Jindal Mining SA’s main business is coal production at the Kiepersol mine, according to one of the documents.

Chinese regulators have freed up an extra $100 billion for bank lending in a move financial analysts said could help to reassure investors amid trade tensions with Washington, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. The reduction on Sunday in reserves banks are required to hold was part of a series of such cuts economists had forecast before the dispute with President Donald Trump erupted. But they said the announcement could help to defuse fears a threatened U.S. tariff hike might dampen Chinese economic growth.

Three years after a wave of forced selling by margin traders fueled a collapse in China’s stock market, a new breed of leveraged shareholders is threatening to trigger another downward spiral, Bloomberg News reported. More than 5 trillion yuan ($770 billion) of Chinese shares, or about 12 percent of the country’s market capitalization, have been pledged as collateral for loans, according to data compiled by China Securities Co. and Bloomberg.

A mad scramble by Chinese property developers to build up their land banks is taking its toll on the industry’s creditworthiness, with builders singled out as having the highest risk of default as channels of credit tighten, Bloomberg News reported. The Bloomberg Default risk model, which tracks metrics including share performance, liabilities and cash flow, shows a 0.87 percent average probability that builders will renege on its obligations in the next 12 months. While the proportion may look small, it’s triple the likelihood of delinquency in the technology industry.

Billionaire banker Uday Kotak’s stressed asset investment unit is asking India’s bankruptcy regulator to ensure that potential buyers of insolvent companies aren’t made to provide non-refundable deposits in exchange for financial information during the sale process, Bloomberg News reported. A court-appointed insolvency professional asked bidders for Golden Jubilee Hotels Ltd., which operates a property that in November hosted Ivanka Trump, to pay an upfront deposit of 1 million rupees ($15,000) while submitting an expression of interest, according to S.

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.

Declines in Chinese stocks and the yuan came to a halt as the government stepped up efforts to limit trade tension fallout, Bloomberg News reported. The Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.3 percent on Wednesday, erasing an earlier loss of 1.2 percent, after plummeting almost 4 percent on Tuesday as investors unwound leveraged positions. The yuan snapped its steepest two-day loss since 2015 after policymakers set the daily fixing at a much stronger level than expected.

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.

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?