A brokerage report Friday saying the parent of China National Erzhong Group Co. won’t pay bond interest due today is prompting speculation over whether the smelting equipment maker will become China’s second state-owned company to default on onshore bonds, Bloomberg News reported. Analysts from China International Capital Corp. said the firm’s controlling shareholder China National Machinery Industry Corp.

Britain's second-biggest steelmaker SSI UK said on Monday it plans to mothball its Redcar plant in northeast England and axe about 1,700 jobs, calling its future into question and deepening a crisis in the British steel sector. The loss-making company, a unit of Thailand's biggest steelmaker Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI), has been hit by a slump in steel prices this year ST-CRU-IDX, which it expects will continue in the short term. The Redcar plant, SSI's only British operation, employs 2,000 people directly, meaning it plans to axe nearly its entire workforce.

Shares of Daiichi Chuo KK, a Japanese shipping line, were halted from trading in Tokyo after the Nikkei newspaper reported the company may seek bankruptcy protection as early as Tuesday. The company’s liabilities may be about 120 billion yen ($1 billion), the newspaper reported. The Tokyo-based company, which mainly does tramp services carrying bulk cargoes such as iron core, coal and grains, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on the Nikkei report. Shares of Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd., the largest shareholder of Daiichi Chuo, slumped as much as 7.4 percent after the report.

When Mark L. Hart III, a hedge fund investor based in Texas, makes an investment bet, he does it in the style of his home state: big time, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Since 2007, his winners have included high-risk, high-return wagers that the United States housing market would collapse and that Greece would go bankrupt. But Mr. Hart’s most audacious gamble to date may well be the one he is making on China.

Shinzo Abe has vowed to boost the size of Japan’s economy from Y491tn to Y600tn and said his programme of reforms was entering a new, second stage, the Financial Times reported. The Japanese prime minister was speaking after his Liberal Democratic party elected him, unopposed, to a second three-year term as its leader, making him one of the few postwar premiers to head a durable government.

After its bond payment default, Amtek Auto is likely to find it difficult to get more funding from lenders, the Business Standard reported. Loans given earlier to the Delhi-based automobile components maker are now classified as Special Mention Account-2, where interest and/or principal are due since 60 days. A loan is classified as non-performing if not serviced for at least 90 days.

Chinese bondholders facing the prospect of a debt default by a state-owned enterprise will receive a bailout, the company said on Tuesday, a sign that Beijing remains unwilling to impose market discipline on lossmaking state groups, the Financial Times reported. China National Erzhong Group, a unit of one of the elite club of 112 big enterprises directly owned by the central government, employed a workforce of more than 13,000 in 2012, when it had assets of Rmb25bn ($3.9bn).

For decades, an army of migrant workers drove China’s boom times, flocking to its cities to sew T-shirts, assemble iPhones, or build apartment blocks and Olympic stadiums, The Wall Street Journal reported. The arrangement helped millions of poor, rural Chinese join a new consumer class, though many also paid a heavy price. Now, many migrant workers struggle to find their footing in a downshifting economy. As factories run out of money and construction projects turn idle across China, there has been a rise in the last thing Beijing wants to see: unrest.

Local financing networks are unravelling across China as the economic slowdown bites into one of the weakest but most enduring links in the financial system — pulling hundreds of thousands of investors down with it, the Financial Times reported. These networks flourished as long as sentiment was high and rapid economic growth persisted. Now, however, investors are taking to the streets across the country as they seek to recoup their losses. Money ploughed into financing schemes that went bust in 2014 amounted to more than Rmb100bn ($16bn).

A Chinese probe found evidence that Citic Securities Co., the nation’s biggest brokerage, engaged in insider trading connected to the government’s rescue of the stock market, people familiar with the matter said, Bloomberg News reported. A preliminary investigation concluded that the brokerage used advance knowledge of government-orchestrated stock purchases to execute trades that benefited the firm, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private.