China's listed property developers issued 960 billion yuan (110.8 billion pounds) in bonds as of Sept. 19, more than three times the amount in the same period last year, financial magazine Caixin reported, citing data from WIND, a Chinese financial data provider. "At this pace, there is no suspense that bond sales by property developers would reach over 1 trillion yuan ($149.91 billion) this year," the report said. The report attributed the rise to easier access, low interest rates, encouraging property policies and a lack of other investment channels.

The South Korean court overseeing Hanjin Shipping's receivership said a rehabilitation plan is "realistically impossible" if top priority debt such as backlogged charter fees exceed 1 trillion won ($896 million), South Korea's Yonhap newswire reported on Wednesday. Hanjin Shipping, the world's seventh-largest container carrier, filed for receivership late last month in a South Korean court and must submit a rehabilitation plan in December.

The Chinese coastal city of Tianjin plans to issue corporate bonds to ease the debt burden of a local state-owned steelmaker — in a flagship case of restructuring in the domestic industry, the Financial Times reported. Tianjin’s city government has finalised a plan to restructure the Rmb192bn ($28.6bn) debt of Bohai Steel Group by placing its most profitable assets into a new company and converting a portion of the liabilities into bonds, according to Caixin, a respected financial magazine.

China’s debt has grown to alarming levels, according to new data from the Bank for International Settlements that highlight a big potential risk to the global economy, the Financial Times reported. What the BIS terms the country’s “credit gap” is now three times higher than the typical danger level, the research shows.

All Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd chartered vessels that have completed unloading their cargo have been told to cancel their charter agreements and return the ships to the shipowners, a South Korean judge said on Monday. Hanjin, the world's seventh-largest container line, filed for receivership last month, leaving more than 100 ships and their cargo at sea and threatening to snarl U.S. freight traffic as the year-end shopping season approaches. Dozens of Hanjin's ships have been blocked from docking with ports and lashing firms fearing they won't be paid.

A warning indicator for banking stress rose to a record in China in the first quarter, underscoring risks to the nation and the world from a rapid build-up of Chinese corporate debt, Bloomberg News reported. China’s credit-to-gross domestic product “gap” stood at 30.1 percent, the highest for the nation in data stretching back to 1995, according to the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements. Readings above 10 percent signal elevated risks of banking strains, according to the BIS, which released the latest data on Sunday.

South Korea's Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd, whose collapse has disrupted global trade, is considering a restructuring plan to sell more than half its ships, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. However, liquidation remained the most likely outcome for Hanjin Shipping, the newspaper cited the sources as saying. Hanjin Shipping, the world's seventh-largest container carrier, filed for receivership late last month in a South Korean court and must submit a rehabilitation plan in December.

Troubled Singaporean oilfield services firm Swiber Holdings said late on Friday it was unable to make the coupon payment for its 450 million yuan ($67.5 million) fixed rate notes due on Sunday. The company applied in July to place itself under judicial management, after initially filing for liquidation, becoming the largest local company to fall victim to the slump in oil prices. Read more.

In a related story, the Yonhap News Agency reported that Korean Air Lines Co., the largest shareholder of the cash-strapped Hanjin Shipping, was unable to decide on Sunday how to provide funding for the nation's leading container shipping line. An official at Korean Air said the company convened an emergency board of directors meeting Sunday to discuss its plan to offer Hanjin Shipping 60 billion won (US$53.3 million) and help ease the cargo crisis triggered by Hanjin's receivership. The meeting was scheduled at the last minute, the official added.

For many years, China's authorities took a Goldilocks approach to housing prices: They wanted a market that was neither too hot nor too cold, and took measures as needed to control prices. Although an explicit asset-price target was never announced, it was widely assumed that the government wanted home prices to grow in line with the rate of economic growth, Bloomberg News reported. To accomplish this, technocrats in Beijing deployed a combination of monetary stimulus and regulatory measures.