India's Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board on Thursday called for public comment on the country's revised bankruptcy code that went into effect last year, signaling that it plans to tweak the law, which the government hopes will resolve India's $150 billion stressed-loans problem, Reuters reported. The board said the window for receiving comments will be open till Dec 31. Modifications to the regulations would be made by March 31 and take effect from April 1, 2018.

Bhushan Steel Ltd reported a March-quarter loss that was much bigger than stated earlier in its unaudited results, as the debt-laden steelmaker was hurt by higher costs, Reuters reported. Audited net loss for the quarter was 11.31 billion rupees ($174.7 million), compared with the unaudited 7.57 billion rupees loss reported in May, Bhushan Steel said late on Wednesday. However, the fourth-quarter loss narrowed marginally from the 11.85 billion rupees loss it reported a year earlier. Total expenses rose more than 18 percent to 59.94 billion rupees for the quarter.

Ten years ago, Essar Steel was leading a rush of Indian corporate investment, exuberantly funded by the country’s dominant state-owned banks, the Financial Times reported. It paid $1.6bn to buy Canada’s Algoma Steel, while pledging billions more to fund projects in Minnesota and Trinidad as well as a doubling of production at its flagship Indian mill to 8.5m tonnes a year.

Just as global investors get a new channel to access China’s $9.8 trillion onshore bond market, it’s starting to look like one that they might recognize. Gone are the days when China’s corporate debt was all pretty much priced the same, with an implicit government backstop giving buyers little reason to demand higher returns from some borrowers over others, Bloomberg News reported. Things started changing in 2014, when the Communist Party leadership with little warning began to allow defaults.

India's market regulator on Friday set tougher rules for the country's ratings agencies, including mandating them to more closely monitor whether issuers are meeting their debt obligations and increasing disclosure requirements, Reuters reported. Regulators and market participants argue the agencies were slow to adjust ratings of some companies that defaulted. Each of the big three global agencies - Standard & Poor's, Fitch Ratings and Moody's Investors Service - are majority owners of firms in India which operate independently of their parent companies with different rating standards.

Bad debts at Indian lenders, especially state-run banks, have climbed to a 15-year high and may increase further, a central bank study showed, Bloomberg News reported. Under the baseline scenario in a “macro stress test,” the industry’s gross bad-loan ratio may increase to 10.2 percent by March 2018 after climbing to 9.6 percent in March 2017, the highest since 2002, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s Financial Stability Report released Friday. Stressed assets, including soured debt and restructured loans, eased slightly to 12 percent in March 2017 from 12.3 percent in September 2016.

India’s benchmark index rose, snapping a three-session losing streak, on the expiry of monthly derivatives contracts as stocks across Asia advanced on optimism that a pick-up in global growth can withstand tighter financial conditions, Bloomberg News reported. The S&P BSE Sensex climbed 0.1 percent to 30,857.52 at 4:25pm in Mumbai as June derivative contracts expire. Private-sector lender Axis Bank Ltd. rose 4.1 percent after saying about 80 percent of its insolvent loans have been secured. The S&P BSE Metals Index and a gauge of consumer goods stocks were among top gainers.

A global sell off in the bond market spread to equities on Thursday amid fears that the post-crisis era of easy money from the world’s largest central banks was coming to an end. While bond yields remain exceptionally low, recent remarks by the heads of the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada have convinced many investors the period of historically-low interest rates and unprecedented central bank bond buying will soon recede, the Financial Times reported.

China’s banking regulator, which has asked local lenders to provide loan information on the country’s top deal-making companies, is examining examples of acquisitions gone awry by those firms to assess potential risks to the financial sector, people familiar with the matter said.

Japanese auto parts maker Takata Corp expressed condolences on Tuesday to victims of its faulty air bags linked to at least 16 deaths and 180 injuries around the world, but stopped short of offering a full apology, Reuters reported. "We offer our condolences to the those who lost their lives and to those who suffered injuries," Shigehisa Takada, chairman and CEO of Takata, said at the company's last annual shareholder meeting as a listed company.