Primorsk International Shipping Ltd., which operates a fleet of ice-class oil tankers in the Arctic, has filed for bankruptcy protection after reaching the terms of a debt-for-equity swap with bondholders, The Wall Street Journal reported. The oil shipper, registered in Cyprus, has been in talks with a group of Norwegian bondholders on the terms of a debt restructuring for more than a year, said Holly Etlin, the company’s chief restructuring officer, in an affidavit filed Sunday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

Behind the numbers showing China’s continued slowdown at the end of last year lies a warning for Communist Party leaders who have been equally determined to embrace economic change and to ensure a rapid pace of growth, Bloomberg News reported. The flashing yellow light: there’s less and less power behind policy makers’ stimulus. For each $1 in credit expansion, China added the equivalent of 27 cents of gross domestic product last year, the least since 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from government figures released Tuesday. As recently as 2011, each $1 generated 59 cents.

Azerbaijan is to impose a 20 per cent tax on transactions to remove cash from the country, as the oil-dependent government tries to contain a currency collapse that has triggered public protests. Baku’s imposition of capital controls is one of the most extreme measures taken so far by former Soviet countries as the region grapples with a crisis triggered by the plunge in oil prices to 13-year lows, the Financial Times reported. The manat has tumbled by more than a third since the central bank abandoned its peg to the dollar last month.

Sainty Marine Corporation started small, buying and selling a few ships in the 1980s. But Sainty Marine, a Chinese state-owned company, went on a debt-fueled binge over the last few years, opening its own shipyards and signing orders worth hundreds of millions of dollars each, the International New York Times reported. Now, heavily indebted companies like Sainty Marine are at the center of the economic troubles in China that have unsettled currency, commodity and stock markets of late.

Communist China has one of the world’s highest levels of income inequality, with the richest 1 per cent of households owning a third of the country’s wealth, a report from Peking University has found, the Financial Times reported. The poorest 25 per cent of Chinese households own just 1 per cent of the country’s total wealth, the study found. China’s Gini coefficient for income, a widely used measure of inequality, was 0.49 in 2012, according to the report. The World Bank considers a coefficient above 0.40 to represent severe income inequality.

Chinese stocks rebounded from the brink of a bear market in a late day swing as the lowest valuations in four months lured bargain hunters and a group of smaller companies pledged to support their share prices, the Irish Times reported. The Shanghai Composite Index gained 2 per cent to 3,007.65 at the close, reversing a loss of as much as 2.8 per cent and sending a gauge of volatility to the highest levels since September.

Debt crises, capital flight and corruption are all familiar problems for poor countries trying to finance their development. A bulwark, say some, is remittances: money sent home by migrants, worth $580 billion in 2014, The Economist reported. Unlike portfolio flows, which tend to flee at the first sign of trouble, remittances usually increase in tough times. And unlike aid, they go directly into the pockets of ordinary people, bypassing corrupt officials. All this is true, and important. But even remittances, alas, cannot always be relied upon.

In a related story, the Financial Times reported in an insight that the volatility in China’s equity and currency markets in the first week of 2016 was reminiscent of August 2015, but more serious. Even though the Chinese equity market doesn’t actually matter that much fundamentally to China or to the global economy, financial policy and the drip-feed depreciation of the renminbi matter a lot. There is a rising anxiety about the credibility of policymakers and regulators, and also about the state of the economy, the reform agenda and now a looming credit crisis.

Dick Smith chief executive Nick Abboud has resigned a week after the failed Australian electronics retailer went into receivership with debt of A$390 million ($272.61 million), its receivers said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Don Grover has been appointed interim CEO, receivers Ferrier Hodgson said in a statement. Gover was formerly CEO of Retail Fusion brands and has more than 30 years experience in the industry. The receivers also launched advertisements on Tuesday seeking expressions of interest for the sale of the Dick Smith and Move businesses.

China guided its yuan currency higher on Monday, and offshore it surged against the dollar, spurred by what traders called aggressive intervention by Beijing, although Chinese stocks tumbled again as doubts persisted over policymakers’ intent, the Irish Times reported on a Reuters story. Perceived mis-steps by China’s authorities have stoked concerns in global markets that Beijing might lose its grip on economic policy, even as the country looks set to post its slowest growth in 25 years.