Troubled Swedish car maker Saab Automobile AB edged closer to bankruptcy after it said it had terminated rescue funding agreements with Chinese auto makers Youngman Lotus Automobile Co. and Pang Da Automobile Trade Co., though the three companies remained in talks, The Wall Street Journal reported. Saab is restructuring its operations under creditor protection and is trying to avoid being closed, after the administrator of the restructuring process on Friday moved to have the company thrown out of receivership and declared insolvent.

Households are sinking under a sea of debt and threaten to take the country’s fragile economy down with them. Policymakers are rightfully alarmed, but their scrambling appears to be pushing families further into the abyss rather than keeping them afloat, The Korea Times reported in a commentary. Under enormous pressure to navigate the country out of this mess, officials at the Financial Services Commission (FSC) and Bank of Korea (BOK) are trying their hardest to put on brave faces and claim the current levels of indebtedness are broadly manageable.

Mortgage broking group Refund Home Loans has been placed in administration, but several buyers are considering acquiring the business which has more than 350 franchisees and a substantial stake in the growing alternative home loan market, SmartCompany.com.au reported. The announcement comes just 18 months after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission slammed the company and Ormond, after he admitted making false and misleading statements to franchisees about an agreement with the ACCC itself.

A scramble to retain customers pulling their money from traditional deposit accounts is causing Chinese banks to use a growing number of alternatives that regulators fear could undermine the financial underpinnings of the economy, the Financial Times reported. China places a ceiling on deposit rates as a way of limiting competition among banks and to fortify the capital positions of institutions that had effectively been insolvent a decade ago.

Beijing is not pleased with the signals that the market for Chinese bank shares is sending about bank fundamentals or the state of the economy. So it is doing what it usually does with information it doesn't like: Cover it up. Central Huijin, an arm of China's sovereign wealth fund that is in turn an agent of the State Council, has started buying the shares of Chinese banks listed in Shanghai and Hong Kong to pump up prices, The Wall Street Journal reported in a commentary. If Japan's "price-keeping operations" are anything to go by, this will only work for a short time.

Taranaki baking business Yarrows (The Bakers) has been sold by receivers BDO to a member of the founding family, John Yarrow, The New Zealand Herald reported. He had originally sold his stake to his brother Paul in 2005, resulting in a legal fight within the family when Paul took him to court over a purchase price he alleged was too high, before settling out of court. The sale, which also includes a solvent Rotorua company, Gilles Bakery, was for an undisclosed sum and follows a five-month search for a buyer by accounting firm BDO, which was appointed receiver in May.

A Goldman Sachs-led consortium continues to be frustrated in its attempts to secure control of the hotels group Redcape Property Fund, The Australian reported in a commentary. The consortium can get events of default under the fund's banking facilities, but it just cannot get a default notice served, which would trigger a requirement for the default to be remedied or the fund would face almost certain administration and receivership, a possibility that may give the consortium more leverage in negotiating with Redcape's bankers, in particular ANZ.

Pub owner National Leisure & Gaming, which operates 35 hotels in New South Wales and Queensland, has blamed "onerous leases" for its collapse and handed receivers the daunting prospect of trying to recover more than $150 million in debt, SmartCompany.com.au reported. NLG, which operated well-known venues including The Brewhouse at Belmore, Bridgeview Hotel at Willoughby, Bankstown Club Hotel and Hermit Park in Townsville, has been teetering on the brink of collapse for the best part of 12 months, and called Ian England and Guy Edwards of PricewaterhouseCoopers as administrators on Friday.

A bet on China's banks is a bet on Beijing's political decisions, The Wall Street Journal Heard on the Street blog reported. That was underlined late Monday when Central Huijin Investment, the domestic arm of the country's sovereign-wealth fund, waded into the markets to buy shares in the big four banks: Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, and China Construction Bank. Huijin said it would buy more shares over the next 12 months. The bank stocks got a boost, as did a previously sagging market overall.

The NSW Supreme Court has cleared the way for Centro's $4 billion restructuring, saying it can proceed to put its complex debt-for-equity proposal to votes of senior lenders, security holders and creditors, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. The restructuring was in doubt after an attempt by the members of a class action and the auditor PwC, who had sought to stop the vote of the senior lenders. Under the revamp, only $10 million would be made available to satisfy contingent creditors - far short of the $300 million they expected to recover if successful.