Liquidators have recovered a further $35,000 from clients who go more money out than they put into an alleged Ponzi scheme. A Christchurch forex firm, which traded as BlackfortFX, has been in receivership since May 2015 after the Financial Markets Authority froze its assets and it was put into liquidation shortly after, The New Zealand Herald reported. Liquidators say the company owes about 1110 clients about $7 million and its sole director, Jimmie Kevin McNicholl, has been charged with obtaining by deception Serious Fraud Office.

China’s financial regulators are working together to draft sweeping new rules for the country’s rapidly-expanding asset-management products that aim to make it clear there’s no government guarantees on such investments, according to people familiar with the matter. The draft rules would apply to products issued by banks, insurers, brokerages and other financial institutions, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private, Bloomberg News reported. The rules would be phased in after existing products mature, and would only apply to new issues, they added.

The Chinese economy seems to have settled into a new normal of slower but still impressive growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. Underneath the apparent calm, however, trouble is brewing. Some of the problems are well known, such as burgeoning debt, the social fallout from deep industrial capacity cuts and the risk of a trade war with the U.S. But one risk has yet to be fully appreciated: financial distress. A cash crunch could paralyze pockets of the fast-growing shadow-banking sector and metastasize.

A South Korean court declared Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd bankrupt on Friday, after ruling earlier this month that the firm's liquidation value would be worth more than its value as a going concern, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Hanjin Shipping, which had been the world's seventh-largest container shipper, applied for court receivership in late August after its creditor banks halted further support. The Seoul Central District Court said in a statement it has chosen a bankruptcy administrator, and claims by creditors are due by May 1, 2017.

Since its founding in 1873 as Japan’s first maker of telegraph equipment, Toshiba has survived a litany of challenges, from the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, to having its factories bombed into rubble during World War II, to the drubbing of the Zune music player it co-developed with Microsoft. Now the conglomerate may be undone by four nuclear power plants under construction in the American South, Bloomberg News reported.

Another January, another credit blowout. But the month’s record lending activity signals mounting pressure on corporate China to roll over its debt as much as it does confidence in the economy, the Financial Times reported. The People’s Bank of China is now tightening monetary policy at the margins but is constrained in how far it can go because of the mounting pressures to service outstanding, and growing, debt obligations.

The number of companies listed on the New Zealand sharemarket will continue to shrink this year, according a forecast on the capital markets. Law firm Chapman Tripp has released a trends and insights report on New Zealand's Equity Markets and is predicting more departures from the NZX and just three new companies to list - a number in line with previous years, The New Zealand Herald reported.

Tata steelworkers in the UK have voted to accept the closure of their £15bn pension fund, a historic sacrifice that brings the industry closer to resolving the crisis in British steel, the Financial Times reported. Thousands of trade union members backed a rescue package that Tata Steel offered its British operation, whose future came under threat after the Indian group threatened to quit the country last March. A key condition of the plan — aimed at saving thousands of jobs and maintaining production — was shutting the British Steel Pension Scheme to further contributions.

For several weeks near the end of last year, Indian banks were besieged by snaking queues of customers waiting to deposit banknotes that had suddenly been declared obsolete by the government, the Financial Times reported. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dramatic demonetisation helped drive a Rs5.1tn ($76bn) increase in bank deposits in the final three months of last year — giving the sector a burst of cheap funding and pushing millions of Indians towards the formal banking sector.

Toshiba Corp.’s problems threatened to spiral out of control as the electronics giant projected a $6.3 billion write-down, postponed its earnings report because of allegations of impropriety and said its chairman was resigning—all in the space of a day, The Wall Street Journal reported. The delay in the earnings report sent Toshiba shares down 8% in Tokyo trading Tuesday, and its president said he was willing to sell most or all of Toshiba’s profitable flash-memory business to help the company survive past the March 31 end of its fiscal year.