Airbus said on Thursday it was studying two proposals to revive Skymark and would favour any plan that both gives the bankrupt Japanese airline a future and takes account of the planemaker's interests, Reuters reported. Alongside aircraft leasing firm Intrepid Aviation Ltd, Airbus is one of the biggest creditors to Skymark, which ran into financial trouble after embarking on an ambitious expansion that included buying A380 superjumbos.

China has given its fifth-largest bank the green light to pursue a market-based reform plan as Beijing seeks to improve efficiency at state-owned companies and counteract a far-reaching economic slowdown, the Financial Times reported. But privatisation will play only a limited role in the shake-up, the latest sign that the Communist party has no intention of relinquishing control of “strategic sectors” such as finance, energy and telecommunications.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to unveil a plan to balance Japan’s budget in five years, a move that underscores Tokyo’s resolve to improve its deficit-ridden finances even as it continues to pursue costly economic-stimulus programs, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a draft plan to be released early next week, Mr.

A nasty consumer debt hangover awaits Thailand, as recently highlighted by EM Squared. Over the past decade, Thais have binged on auto financing and unsecured loans, to the extent that nominal household debt doubled between 2008 and 2014, and debt has reached 80 per cent of GDP*. Consumption growth has stalled, and neither consumers nor the country’s banks can stomach much more. Yet for many in Thailand, the situation is even more precarious than official figures suggest.

The Chinese government risks “real damage” to the economy if it does not hasten reform of China’s state-owned enterprises and overhaul a debt-fuelled growth model, Hank Paulson has warned, the Financial Times reported. For more than two decades the former US Treasury secretary and Goldman Sachs chief has worked closely with pivotal Chinese political figures such as Wang Qishan, currently head of the Chinese Communist party’s anti-graft bureau, and visits Beijing frequently.

Renhe Commercial appears to have a well-fortified business model: It builds air raid shelters across China for the government, outfitting them as underground shopping malls for use during peacetime, the International New York Times reported. But even that strategy has not been enough to protect the company from the fallout from China’s property market slump. Like many Chinese developers, Renhe is struggling with financial losses and debt, and it has been looking for other sources of income.

Rating agency Moody's warned on Wednesday that financial distress will rise among Chinese companies amid a slowing economy and a government reform agenda which is intended to allow markets to play a decisive role. But policy easing and government support would prevent corporate distress from rising so much it could cause systemic risk to onshore and offshore markets, it said. The agency also underscored the worsening covenant quality of property high yield bonds, although these agreements offered more protection than those in other regions.

With youth unemployment near a 15-year high and the government planning to raise the retirement age, intergenerational conflict over jobs is rising in South Korea, Bloomberg News reported. The jobless rate for workers aged 15 to 29 touched 11 percent earlier this year and is about four times higher than for those aged 40 and above. At the other end of the spectrum, Korea has an underdeveloped pension system and the highest elderly poverty rate in the OECD, as companies push employees in their fifties into early retirement to contain costs.

The Canberra Eye Hospital is in voluntary administration and its owners, who include pioneering eye surgeons, appear to be in a dispute over the sale of the business with shareholders, The Canberra Times reported. One of the founders, Dr Leo Shanahan, said the company had $2.3 million in the bank 15 months before it went into voluntary administration in about January.

Proposed new obligations on multinationals to produce country-by-country reports on their financial affairs will have a “massive impact” on them, a leading member of the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation has said, the Irish Times reported. Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the Center for Tax Policy and Administration at the OECD, was reacting to what he said were “angry responses” to the organisation’s latest proposals on the topic.