Cash-strapped China Shanshui Cement has received several demands for repayments from creditors, following a default even as it had started winding up proceedings, it said in a stock exchange filing. The default was on a 2 billion yuan bond which was due on Thursday, about which the company had warned a day before. The company said that China Construction Bank had demanded repayment of a $50 million loan by Thursday failing which it would institute legal proceedings against its subsidiary China Pioneer Cement, which owed the debt.

Kazakhstan’s president certainly caught the imagination of the City of London. In closed-door meetings last week, Nursultan Nazarbayev and other Kazakh officials said the commodity-rich central Asian nation would unload hundreds of companies, including its industrial crown jewels, in the most ambitious privatisation drive since its independence from the Soviet Union, the Financial Times reported.

South Korea's financial watchdog said Wednesday that it has picked 175 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to be placed under debt restructuring this year as part of government-led efforts to sort out highly indebted firms and prevent their sudden collapse, Yonhap News Agency reported. The number of debt-heavy firms selected for 2015 rose by 50 to 175 this year from a year earlier, with 70 of them given a rating of "C" and the remaining 105 graded a "D," according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).

China’s consumers are gradually picking up the baton from the traditional economic engines of manufacturing and real estate, data released on Wednesday show, as the painful rebalancing process inches ahead, the Financial Times reported. The slowdown of factory activity and construction pushed Chinese gross domestic product growth to its lowest annual pace since 2009 in the third quarter at 6.9 per cent, and the latest data suggest these sectors have not yet bottomed out.

China's factory output and investment weakened in October while retail sales growth edged up, suggesting economic growth has stabilized but has yet to revive despite repeated interest rate cuts and other stimulus, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. The data reported Wednesday reflected the two-speed nature of the economy as communist leaders try to encourage growth based on consumer spending instead of trade, investment and heavy industry. Economic growth decelerated to a six-year low of 6.9 percent in the latest quarter.

During an interview last month at the posh Shangri-La Hotel in Hong Kong, Henry Li stepped aside four times in an hour to take calls. Creditors were frantically trying to connect with the chief financial officer of China Shanshui Cement Group Ltd., and they wanted to know one thing: Was his company about to default? "Honestly speaking, banks are very worried about us, as you can tell from the fact that I’ve received many calls,” said Li, sitting alongside Shanshui Chairman Zhang Bin as they discussed the firm’s predicament with Bloomberg on Oct. 14.

A consortium of investors in debt-laden Chinese developer Kaisa Group Holding led by Farallon Capital has drafted a proposal that would inject $650 million into the company and result in higher recovery for bondholders, documents seen by Reuters showed. Under the proposal, the consortium would inject $150 million into the company with the rest coming from existing shareholders exercising warrants to buy heavily discounted shares. That purchase would result in the consortium owning a 20 percent stake, with existing shareholders getting an additional $5 million in cash on a pro-rata basis.

TPK Holding Co (宸鴻), a major supplier of touchpanels for Apple Inc’s iPhone 6S and Watch, yesterday reported a quarterly loss of NT$19.39 billion (US$595 million) due to massive asset impairments, The Taipei Times reported. The company said it is undertaking a drastic restructuring as lackluster demand for touchscreen notebook computers has affected its factory utilization rate, leaving some of its equipment idle. TPK posted NT$18.97 billion in impaired assets last month, mainly from unprofitable and idled equipment.

The chief financial regulator said Wednesday that he will help creditors speed up restructuring of steel, petrochemical and shipping companies struggling to stay afloat after being hit hard by low demand in global markets, The Korea Times reported. Financial Services Commission Chairman Yim Jong-yong said he will support companies with potential to recover by injecting fresh money while kicking out corporations which are not sustainable. "We will discuss with other government agencies ways to strengthen competitiveness in the fields and directions for restructuring.

India's government on Wednesday published long-awaited proposals to overhaul an outdated and overburdened bankruptcy process, calling for public comment on what could become the country's first unified bankruptcy code. The proposed bill aims to dramatically speed up decisions on whether to save or liquidate ailing companies, in a move to curb asset stripping and ensure higher recovery rates for creditors - both key to fostering a modern credit market and increased investment in India.