The International Monetary Fund's top banking official, assessing the strength of China's financial system, said Chinese regulators need to improve the data they use to assess whether their banks could withstand a sudden economic downturn, and also should better explain what level of capital banks need to hold. "There are important constraints and gaps in the available data" for stress tests of China's banks, said José Viñals, the IMF's director of monetary and capital markets, in written responses Sunday to questions from The Wall Street Journal.

Insolvency experts are welcoming a Court of Appeal decision they say gives comfort to firms trading with a company in receivership, Stuff.co.nz reported. The wisdom of continuing to do business with a troubled entity was called into question by a dispute between the receivers of pet food manufacturer Lovitt's and packaging company Huhtamaki New Zealand. Huhtamaki claims it is $280,000 out of pocket after receivers Deloitte ordered ongoing supplies but then said there were no available funds to pay for them.

BTA Bank may ask the Kazakh government to back its second debt restructuring or provide additional state funds to help avert bankruptcy, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg reported. BTA may seek a capital injection of more than $4 billion, said the people, who declined to be identified because the information isn’t public. Lazard Freres & Co., which acted as an adviser to BTA during its debt reorganization in 2009, assessed the cost of another restructuring last month, the people said.

Saab's Dutch owner and China's Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile have agreed that the Bank of China , the nation's fourth-largest bank by market value, will come in as part owner of the ailing carmaker, according to a source familiar with the deal, Reuters reported. Under the new deal, the Bank of China will replace Chinese investor Pang Da Automobile Trade Co. Youngman and the Bank of China will own just under 50 percent of the company. The move could help pave the way for an approval by General Motors , which still has preferential shares in Saab and rejected an earlier rescue plan.

The world's major central banks acted jointly on Wednesday to provide cheaper dollar funding to European banks facing a credit crunch as the euro zone's debt crisis drove EU ministers to urge more IMF help to avert financial disaster, Reuters reported. The emergency move by the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the central banks of Japan, Britain, Canada and Switzerland recalled coordinated action to stabilise global markets in the 2008 financial crisis after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

China’s central bank, in a surprise move on Wednesday, shifted its economic focus from fighting inflation to stimulating growth by freeing the nation’s commercial banks to lend more money, the International Herald Tribune reported. The bank’s move was separate from the subsequent announcement by central bankers in the United States, Europe and Japan that they would pump more dollars into the European banking system. And Western officials said Beijing’s move was not done in coordination with theirs.

ANZ National Bank, the country's biggest lender, is seeking to recover $25.2 million from the sale of bankrupt Wellington property developer Terry Serepisos' former headquarters, The New Zealand Herald reported. Receivers for Century City Investments, Barry Jordan and David Vance, who were appointed by the bank on Sept. 30, have put ASB Bank Tower up for sale in a public tender being jointly managed by Colliers International and CBRE.

China is more interested in investing directly in Europe than buying European Union debt with its colossal foreign currency reserves, a senior civil servant said Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal Real Time Brussels blog reported. Wang Yiming, a vice director at the National Development and Reform Commission’s macroeconomic research institute, said at the EU-China forum in Brussels that internal discussions about how to invest the country’s $3.2 trillion of reserves are leaning in this direction.

A consortium of 26 lenders to Air India Ltd. has broadly approved a plan to restructure 180 billion rupees ($3.45 billion) debt for the loss-making carrier, an aviation ministry official said Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The turnaround plan includes converting some loans into equity, restructuring some at lower interest rates and elongating the repayment tenure for the rest. It was prepared by the state-run carrier in consultation with the government and its consultant SBI Capital Markets Ltd. and recently got approval from the country's central bank.

Airplane-leasing companies are preparing to repossess planes from India's Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. if the troubled carrier's finances deteriorate further, said an executive at one of the companies, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported. The executive said that at least two lessors have agents at Kingfisher's offices copying documents relating to their planes. These agents also are monitoring the debt-laden airline's planes to ensure that parts aren't removed in ways that violate lease terms.