A bank raises money from its customers to make an off-the-books investment packaged by a private investment company as a loan to a pawn shop, which in turn makes loans to companies that banks aren’t willing to lend to because they’re not comfortable with the credit risk. Welcome to the wheels-within-wheels of China’s shadow banking system, the China Real Time blog reported. But the complexity being unwound by the recent default of a $22.5 million wealth management product sold by Huaxia Bank Co. to its customers doesn’t stop there.

BTA, Kazakhstan's third-largest bank by assets, has won a vote by its shareholders, dominated by the state sovereign wealth fund, to restructure its $11.2 billion of debt, the second such agreement with creditors in as many years, Reuters reported. In its first restructuring in 2010 BTA had cut net debt by two thirds to $4.2 billion in a deal that bought sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna an 81.5-percent stake.

Auckland-based organic food company Pitango has been placed into receivership along with its Australian parent company, which is understood to owe millions of dollars to its creditors, Stuff.co.nz reported. Pitango, with around 25 staff, makes a range of soups, curries, risottos, sauces and pastas which are sold in supermarkets. Receivers Ferrier Hodgson said in a statement that Pitango's parent company, Gourmet Food Holdings, had been placed into receivership and that included Pitango, Australian tomato sauce firm Rosella, and Australian biscuit firm Waterwheel.

The Crafar family farms put into receivership three years ago are now legally in the hands of their new Chinese owner, Radio New Zealand reported. The Shanghai Pengxin group had to overcome legal challenges from New Zealand farming and Maori interests but finally took possession of the 16 North Island farms on Friday. Spokesman Cedric Allan says the aim is to lift production on the 13 dairy and three dry stock farms under the management of the state owned farming enterprise LandCorp.

Japan has unleashed a new barrage of stimulus at its stagnant economy as debate over how to revive growth heats up ahead of a general election, The Australian reported on an AAP story. The stimulus package announced by the cabinet on Friday totals Y880.3 billion ($A10.34 billion). It is earmarked mainly for spending on social programs, employment creation and support for small and medium-size enterprises. The economy shrank 3.5 per cent in July-September, and many economists say they expect a further contraction in the current quarter.

Political interference has impeded an investigation into the collapse of Afghanistan's largest private lender, with some investors, including President Hamid Karzai's brother Mahmood, escaping scrutiny, a joint Afghan-international watchdog said in a report released Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Afghan Attorney General's investigation into Kabul Bank's 2010 collapse has led to the prosecution of several bank executives, who have been on trial in the Afghan capital for about a month.

Indian wind-turbine maker Suzlon Energy Ltd. has reached an agreement with its lenders to restructure 110 billion rupees ($1.98 billion) of local loans, a person with knowledge of the matter said Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company will get a two-year holiday on interest and principal payments on the debt, which was due in five to six years, this person said. At the end of two years, the loans will be repaid over eight years at a lower interest rate, the person added. Suzlon declined to comment on the matter.

Banks face hidden risks from their links to China's fast-growing "shadow-finance" industry, a term for all types of credit outside formal lending channels. Shadow finance in China totals about 20 trillion yuan, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., or about a third the current size of the country's bank-lending market. In 2008, such informal lending represented only 5% of total bank lending. The sector is lightly regulated and opaque, raising concerns about massive loan defaults amid a softening economy, with ancillary effects on the country's banks.

The Australian government was granted permission by a court on Friday to prepare legal action against coal baron Nathan Tinkler as creditors close in on the former billionaire, Reuters reported on Saturday. The New South Wales Supreme Court gave the Deputy Commissioner of Taxation leave to prepare a case against Tinkler's holding company, the latest of a series of legal actions over unpaid bills and commercial disputes.

Indian officials pledged to cut the widest budget deficit among the world’s largest emerging markets and curb public debt, as a report this week may show the economy grew at close to the slowest pace in three years, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The government is "optimistic" it will rein in the shortfall for the year through March 31 to 5.3 percent of gross domestic product from the previous year's 5.8 percent, and has no plan "at the moment" to increase its record borrowing program, Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in Pune, India, on Nov. 24.