Kazakhstan's Alliance Bank, majority owned by the country's sovereign wealth fund, is close to completing a $1.2 billion debt restructuring and a merger with two other banks, its chief executive said on Wednesday. Timur Issatayev, who has been meeting creditors in London and New York, told Reuters he was confident of getting the go-ahead at creditor and shareholder meetings due in coming weeks. The proposals, put forward in August, are seen halving the nominal value of existing bond holdings to $300 million.

China is lowering down payment requirements and discounting mortgages as declining housing sales put a drag on the economy, Bloomberg News reported. After four years of government restrictions to cool housing prices that had tripled since 2000, the central bank is reversing course, making it easier for homeowners to buy second properties. They are not likely to get back into the market, several analysts said, until prices become more affordable.

Hotel-management chain Aqua Sol, owner and administrator of 15 hotels in Cyprus, Rhodes and Crete, along with its nine subsidiaries has been placed under receivership for its failure to comply with its contractual obligations with the Bank of Cyprus, it was announced on Tuesday, Cyprus Mail reported.

Troubled steelmaker Lucchini said on Tuesday it planned to ask India's JSW Steel to raise its offer of less than $100 million for the Italian company's core assets in Piombino on the Tuscan coast, Reuters reported. Lucchini, Italy's second-largest steel plant by capacity, was previously owned by Russia's Severstal, but it was declared insolvent in 2012 and placed under special administration. JSW so far has made the only binding offer.

The Chinese developer Agile Property Holdings, battling an industry slowdown and speculation about ties to China’s former security chief, said that it was in talks with banks about extending a bridge loan and that the founder’s family would commit to lending $200 million, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Shares in the company, valued at around $2.1 billion, slumped by as much as 31 percent on Monday to five-year lows as they resumed trading after a week’s halt.

China has taken a big step towards the resolution of its mounting local government debt burden with the introduction of a legal framework allowing cities and provinces to issue debt directly, Reuters reported. Last week's regulations make it clear that the central government will not bail out local obligations, a key step in creating a municipal bond market that analysts expect will reach Rmb1trn (US$164bn) of new issues in 2015.

“We will not kick you when you are down, at least not for a couple of days”: that is the gist of a putative deal struck by 18 global banks this week, which agreed not to pull abruptly out of contracts with each other if one of them hits the buffers. As modest as that may sound, regulators see it as the foundation of a firewall to halt the spread of future financial crises, The Economist reported. The agreement concerns derivatives, contracts whose value “derives” from the performance of an underlying asset such as a share, currency or bond.

Shanghai Chaori Solar Energy Science & Technology Co., which earlier this year became the first Chinese company to default on its domestic corporate bonds, plans to bring in a new controlling shareholder and two bond guarantors, The Wall Street Journal reported. The bond guarantors will likely honor the bond’s full payments, both in principal and interest. Developments at Shanghai Chaori—which failed to pay most of its bond interest in March—are being closely watched.

Well-known helicopter company Helipro has put itself into receivership, Stuff.co.nz reported. Helipro employs about 70 staff, with eight bases throughout New Zealand and operations in Fiji and Australia. As well as commercial and tourism helicopter flights, the company provides maintenance services, and helicopter and fixed-wing flight training. PwC partners John Fisk and David Bridgeman were appointed as receivers yesterday to Rick Lucas Helicopters Ltd and related entities which trade as Helipro, at the request of the companies' director.

The largest global banks will have to hold more capital and liabilities than previously reported that can automatically be written off in a crisis -- as much as a quarter of risk-weighted assets -- as regulators take on lenders deemed too big to fail. The Financial Stability Board is developing minimum standards that will limit the double-counting of capital banks use to meet existing international rules, according to an FSB working document sent for comment to Group of 20 governments and obtained by Bloomberg News.