Shockwaves from a default by the biggest bank in Azerbaijan are spreading to its neighbor on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea, Bloomberg reported. Already burned by the International Bank of Azerbaijan’s missed payment and its effort to wrest a 20 percent principal writedown in a proposed debt restructuring, investors are starting to wonder if Kazakhstan’s Kazkommertsbank is the next domino to fall. Its $250 million of subordinated bonds are trading below par only two weeks before maturity, a sign the bank’s ability to come through is in doubt.

Brutal competition and 457 billion rupees ($7 billion) of borrowings have finally caught up with billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications Ltd. The Indian wireless operator rattled investors with its first full-year net loss amid signs it’s struggling to repay debt, Bloomberg News reported. Its $300 million junk-rated note due in 2020 declined as much as 13.9 cents on the dollar to 70.1 cents on Monday and the stock sank to a record low.

In India, the vultures are circling. These vultures are investors looking for opportunities in distressed assets and bad debts. For years they had avoided investing in India, put off by a creakingly slow legal system and a labyrinthine bureaucracy. But a new bankruptcy law and a move this month to give India’s central bank expansive powers to tackle bad debt have excited investors both here and abroad who think investing in India’s distressed market could produce double-digit returns, the International New York Times reported.

The bank regulator in a rust-belt Chinese province has urged regional lenders to roll over maturing loans to struggling coal and steel companies, a policy that cuts against the Communist party’s pledge to shut down “zombie” enterprises, the Financial Times reported. Investors widely assume that Chinese banks keep lossmaking companies on life support by rolling over maturing loans, often under pressure from local governments.

As recently as two years ago, owning shares in a bad bank charged with cleaning up nonperforming loans in China probably seemed like a good bet. Not so any more, at least for China Cinda Asset Management Co.The Beijing-based firm's costs are rising and soured-loan growth has leveled off, or in some cases, dropped at the banks Cinda purchases nonperforming advances from. Cinda's Hong Kong-listed stock is down 46 percent from its peak in January 2014 and is trading at a price-to-book ratio of 0.67 times, well below the one times at which it was listed at the end of 2013.

ChemChina has raised $20 billion (15.4 billion pounds) mainly in perpetual bonds to finance its purchase of Swiss seeds firm Syngenta, with Bank of China becoming the single largest investor providing half of that funding, according to a regulatory filing, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

The order book at Singapore shipyards fell by more than half last year as the city-state’s offshore industry was battered by the slide in oil prices.

A “too big to fail” trade has backfired on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The International Bank of Azerbaijan is imposing haircuts on holders of $3.3 billion of foreign debt after suffering loan and currency losses, the International New York Times reported. Creditors who had counted on the government to keep propping up the state-owned lender have been taught a painful lesson. The falling price of oil has had harsh effects on Azerbaijan and its banks.

The downgrade of China’s debt by Moody’s Investors Service may push Chinese companies to borrow even more money from domestic banks as overseas debt becomes more expensive, increasing risks for the nation’s finance industry, Bloomberg News reported. With growing indebtedness at home, compounded by a slowing economy, there’s a risk of a “negative feedback loop,” said Khoon Goh, head of Asia research for Australia & New Zealand Banking Group who sees state-owned enterprises and property developers feeling the biggest impact.

Bank of Cyprus, the only eurozone bank to forcibly bail in depositors during the financial crisis, has been fined €18m by the island’s competition regulator for abusing its dominant market position in the credit cards, the Financial Times reported. The bank, which was restructured as part of the €10bn international rescue of the Cypriot banking sector in 2013, said in a statement on Wednesday it would appeal the fine “through all available court processes”. The Cyprus Commission for the Protection of Competition announced the fine on May 22.