Singapore Inc is facing mounting concerns as the city-state’s long-successful oil and gas sector turns sour with the oil price slump, the Financial Times reported. Oil and gas services have been a lucrative niche for the country. It is the world’s biggest maker of jack-up rigs, which are used to drill for oil in shallow ocean waters. But the plunging price of oil, currently hovering around $40 a barrel, has turned this strength into a source of economic pain as rig builders have been forced to slash jobs while smaller oil services providers face bankruptcy.

South Korea's financial watchdog on Sunday said 32 big local firms should carry out restructuring, a move that could be aimed at keeping financially troubled companies from further hurting Asia's fourth-largest economy, the Yonhap News Agency reported. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) made the announcement after conducting a credit risk analysis on 602 companies, which were selected out of 1,973 owing over 50 billion won (US$44 million) to banks and showed signs of financial health problems.

China’s banking regulator has warned companies not to use the word “bank” in their names following a series of scandals and multibillion-dollar investment scams, the Financial Times reported. Several outfits posing as accredited financial institutions have been exposed by the regulator in the past year, among them a China Construction Bank operating out of a convenience store in a village in Shandong province. Banks and other deposit-taking institutions in China need approval from the State Council to use the label “bank” or perform most banking services.

China is edging closer to launching its own version of a popular hedging tool that protects investors in case of defaults, as the world’s No. 2 economy struggles to cope with slowing growth and record numbers of companies not paying back debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. The National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors, an industry body backed by China’s central bank, has consulted major banks and brokerage firms in recent weeks about the planned rollout of credit-default swaps, three people familiar with the situation said.

India's Suzlon Energy Ltd hopes to exit a process of corporate debt restructuring by March 2017, its chairman said on Thursday, a turnaround for a company that four years ago reeled under heavy debt after an ill-advised overseas expansion, the Economic Times reported. Suzlon's purchase of German wind energy firm RePower, now renamed Senvion, for 1.4 billion euros ($1.56 billion) in 2007 proved a costly mistake after the 2008 global financial crisis dented demand for wind turbines.

Never before have China’s companies had so much cash and so little to spend it on. With investment opportunities sparse amid the country’s weakest economic expansion in a quarter century, Chinese firms reported an 18 percent jump in cash holdings during their latest quarter, the biggest increase in six years. The $1.2 trillion stockpile -- which excludes banks and brokerages -- grew at a faster pace than in the U.S., Europe and Japan, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Japanese growth is still sluggish. Consumers aren’t consuming much, and businesses aren’t investing. The government doesn't have many options to remedy this, and the Bank of Japan, which has sent both long-term and short-term interest rates into negative territory, has basically no more room to maneuver, Bloomberg News reported. The dreaded Zero Lower Bound is starting to bite. The BOJ is buying more stocks, but this too has its limits -- eventually companies become de facto nationalized, as the government becomes the majority shareholder.

After more than a year of gridlock, the upper house of India’s parliament approved a contentious overhaul of the country’s convoluted tax system, an important step in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign to modernize Asia’s No. 3 economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. Lawmakers voted Wednesday to replace India’s jumble of federal, state and interstate sales taxes with a nationwide goods-and-services tax, or GST. Parliament’s lower house, where Mr.

The faith that international investors have put in some credit sweeteners on Chinese debt is being tested with the latest default from one of the nation’s builders. China City Construction International Co., whose recent shareholder change triggered early redemption of its debt, failed to make full payment due June 20 on its 5.35 percent 2.5 billion yuan ($377 million) Dim Sum notes with an original 2017 maturity, people familiar with the matter said last month. Its parent China City Construction Holding Group Co.

In the three and a half years since he won the Japanese prime minister’s office on a pledge to rekindle economic growth, Shinzo Abe has tried many tactics to coax the economy into expanding, the International New York Times reported. He persuaded the central bank to flood the country with cheap money. He sanctioned a sharp fall in the value of the yen, a boon for big exporters like Toyota and Panasonic. And he increased government spending, pouring cash into areas as varied as day care and defense. The result has been well short of the renaissance Mr. Abe promised.