Kingdom Jewellery is trying to stand out among the eerily quiet luxury stores in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay, once the world’s most expensive shopping district in terms of rents. But while it has hung signs promoting a “crazy sale” and payment by instalments in the window, buyers are still scarce, the Financial Times reported. “Our customer flow has dropped 60-70 per cent” since the peak of Chinese luxury spending in 2013, says manager Jacky Sze.

More than half of Chinese infrastructure investments have “destroyed, not generated” economic value as the costs have been larger than the benefits, according to researchers at Oxford university, a finding that will fuel debate over the viability of China’s infrastructure-heavy growth model. Infrastructure investment has been a major driver of Chinese economic growth over the past 35 years as hundreds of millions of workers migrated from rural to urban areas. China has stepped up infrastructure spending this year to buffer a slowdown in manufacturing investment.

Australia marked 25 years without a recession in the second quarter, another step closer to the Dutch record for the longest developed-economy expansion of recent decades, The Wall Street Journal reported. The economy grew 0.5% in the second quarter from the first and by 3.3% from a year earlier—the fastest pace in four years, pushed by spending on housing and public investment, government data showed Wednesday. The data also show, though, that growth increasingly relies on policy makers’ pulling out all the stops as the economy tries to reinvent itself.

A South Korean court presiding over the rehabilitation process of Hanjin Shipping Co Ltd has asked the firm's lead creditor for fresh funds, warning the troubled container shipper needs financial support this week to normalize operations, Reuters reported. The court did not say how much it had requested from lead creditor Korea Development Bank and government ministries.

South Korea’s Hanjin Group will put up 100 billion won ($90 million) to help Hanjin Shipping Co., as the troubled shipping affiliate struggles to get its stalled supply chain moving globally, The Wall Street Journal reported. The parent of the country’s largest container operator, and the world’s seventh-largest by capacity, will raise 60 billion won, using its stake in a terminal at Port of Long Beach in California and other assets as collateral, the group said Tuesday. The remaining 40 billion won will come from Chairman Cho Yang-ho’s personal wealth.

When several large state-owned companies in China unexpectedly defaulted on their debts earlier this year, the government seemed determined to send a clear and unified message: it was time to get rid of zombie companies, Reuters reported. But since then, China's signals have become increasingly contradictory and as a result bond market pricing suggests investors see the smallest chance in seven years that many firms will be allowed to go bankrupt.

Eight Chinese centrally-owned state-owned enterprises signed restructuring contracts on Tuesday, the state-run China Securities Journal reported on Wednesday, The Daily Mail reported on a Reuters story. These companies are Aviation Industry Corp of China, China National Machinery Industry Corp, China Poly Group Corp, China First Heavy Industries, China North Industries Group Corp, China South Industries Group Corp, China Reform Holdings Corp Inc, and China Nuclear Engineering Construction Corp.

A breakdown in Clive Palmer’s relationship with administrators of his Queensland Nickel business was evident around the time a dispute flared over a private jet, the company’s former financial chief has told the federal court, The Guardian reported. The court hearing by liquidators into the collapse of Queensland Nickel was shown an email stating that FTI Consulting’s John Park had “upset Clive P on the phone this evening” during a conversation about the administrator’s seizure of a Cessna Citation aircraft.

South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping Co. is taking further legal action in countries beyond the U.S. for protection of its assets as it works to get a frozen supply chain moving again, with more than half its vessels stranded in ports world-wide and at sea, The Wall Street Journal reported. Hanjin plans to file for court protection in about 10 countries, including Canada, Germany and the U.K., this week and later expand that to 43 jurisdictions to protect its ships and other assets from being seized by creditors, South Korea’s Financial Services Commission said Monday.

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda signaled his readiness to ease monetary policy further using existing or new tools, shrugging off growing market concerns that the bank is reaching its limits after an already massive stimulus program, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. He also stressed the BOJ's comprehensive assessment of its policies later this month won't lead to a withdrawal of easing.