The value of announced mergers and acquisitions (M&A) worldwide fell 27 percent year-on-year to $753 billion in the third quarter of 2016, as apprehension among corporate executives about overpaying prevented a repeat of last year's deal-making frenzy, Reuters reported today. While M&A activity remains robust, dealmakers said companies are being more selective in their decisions to do deals.

China is struggling with a string of rust-belt corruption cases that reflect the government’s troubles delivering on one of its signature policies: reducing the bloat in major industries that are dragging down the economy, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In the latest case, made public by official media this week, prosecutors accused a midlevel official of siphoning at least $6.3 million in government funds meant to help laid-off workers.

Minority shareholders of Singapore's main rail operator SMRT Corp Ltd voted overwhelmingly today in favor of Temasek Holdings' S$1.18 billion ($866 million) bid to take full control of the company, Reuters reported. Of the shareholders present at the meeting, 84.8 percent voted in support of the buyout, SMRT said in a statement. State investor Temasek, as majority shareholder, had no voting rights for the buyout of the 46 percent of SMRT shares it does not already own.

Sainty Marine Corp., a shipbuilder based in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, plans to convert its capital into about 520 million new shares and swap some or all of them with debt as part of a revamp, Bloomberg News reported today. Creditors will get one equity share for about 13.72 yuan ($2.1) of Sainty’s debt under the restructuring, the company said in a draft plan to the Shenzhen stock exchange. Sainty Marine had more than 800 million yuan ($120 million) of loans overdue when trading in its shares was halted about a year ago.

The South Korean court overseeing Hanjin Shipping's receivership process said on Wednesday that a sale of the world's seventh-largest container carrier, which collapsed late last month, is one of many options it is considering if the court concludes the company is to be rehabilitated, Reuters reported today. Judge Choi Ung-young, who serves as a court spokesman for media inquiries on the case, said a sale is possible in principle if it's deemed the best way to rehabilitate the company, but the court has yet to reach a decision. Hanjin, which filed for court receivership on Aug.

PT Trikomsel Oke, an Indonesian mobile-phone retailer that defaulted on bonds last year, said that a court hearing on the company’s debt workout plan will be held today, Bloomberg News reported. A Jakarta commercial court had decided on Sept. 26 to postpone a deliberation meeting, the firm said in a filing to the Singapore stock exchange. The company said that it obtained approval from creditors based on the majority of votes cast at a meeting held on Sept. 22.

Chinese regulators have pushed through the debt restructuring plan of a state-owned steel trader as the government gets set for a new round of debt cleanups, Bloomberg News reported today. Sinosteel Engineering & Technology Co. yesterday received a notice from its controlling holder Sinosteel Corp. that its parent’s plan had been approved with guidance from government agencies, according to a statement from the unit to the Shenzhen stock exchange. Beijing-based Sinosteel Corp.

A sleepy, former coal-mining town in northern Japan is taking unprecedented measures to combat its biggest challenge: a devastating shrinking of its population, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Since its peak in the post-war economic boom of the 1960s, the population of Yubari, a little more than an hour’s drive east of Sapporo on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, has declined by more than 90 percent to just 9,000 as older residents died and young people moved away to bigger cities. Ten years ago, it became Japan’s first municipality to declare bankruptcy.

While economists and many foreign investors fret about China’s spiralling debt and rising defaults, a small niche of alternative asset managers is braving the China credit space, attracted by high yields from borrowers shut out from other sources of finance, the Financial Times reported. Global banks have pulled back on cross-border lending to China, but some private debt funds are moving in to plug gaps in a domestic financial system still dominated by state-owned banks.

Failed South Korean container carrier Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd (117930.KS) told a U.S. judge on Friday that cargo owners were withholding up to $80 million in payments for completed shipments, complicating the company's ability to move stranded freight. "Hanjin is not the only bad guy here," Ilana Volkov, an attorney for the shipping company, said at a status hearing at a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Newark, New Jersey. Hanjin lawyers said that many cargo owners had received their goods on credit but have yet to pay the shipping company.