Creditors across Japan are trying to claw back more than $700 million from a payments firm suspected to have faked its financial statement for at least 20 years and abruptly collapsed into bankruptcy this week, Bloomberg News reported. The financial failure of Osaka-based Zentoshin has left 63 creditors with claims totaling ¥115.16 billion ($709 million), according to Tokyo Shoko Research. The creditors are mostly regional banks and other local lenders, with the biggest amount owed to Kinkisangyou Shinkumi Bank in Osaka at about ¥22 billion, the credit research firm wrote in a report.

Japan’s bank lending expanded at the fastest pace since the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting credit is still accessible and the Bank of Japan has room to keep raising interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Loans rose 6.3% in June from a year earlier, the strongest growth since August 2020, according to a BOJ report released Wednesday. The increase was driven by lending for mergers and acquisitions, real estate and economic recovery, the central bank said. The figures reinforce the BOJ’s assessment that financial conditions remain accommodative even after Gov.

Malaysia’s central bank once again left rates on hold as economic stability gave it room to keep policy settings steady even as Middle East tensions flare, the Wall Street Journal reported. Bank Negara Malaysia on Thursday left its overnight policy rate at 2.75%, extending a pause stretching back to July last year, when it delivered a 25-basis-point cut due to threats to the economy from external uncertainties.

The bankruptcy of Zentoshin, an Osaka-based credit card payment processor, threatens both the regional banks that funded it as well as the small and medium-sized restaurants that relied on its services, Bloomberg News reported. Zentoshin filed for bankruptcy with the Osaka District Court on Monday, according to Teikoku Databank, Japan’s largest private corporate credit research firm. The company had total liabilities of approximately ¥115.2 billion ($710 million), at the time of the filing, making it Japan’s largest corporate bankruptcy of the year.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand raised interest rates Wednesday in what appeared to be a tentative move by policy makers to combat nagging inflation pressures, the Wall Street Journal reported. The official cash rate was raised by 25 basis points to 2.5%. The bank’s policy-setting committee expressed mixed views on the extent of the inflation outlook, but in the end arrived at a consensus decision to remove some of the accommodation in the setting on interest rates.

China's securities regulator said it was monitoring developments in a US lawsuit after Susquehanna International Group alleged insider traders made at least $100 million from well-timed options bets before Beijing's recent crackdown on illegal cross-border trading, Bloomberg News reported. The China Securities Regulatory Commission stopped short of signaling any domestic probe, saying only that it would continue to follow the case closely. It notified online brokers before the penalty announcement was made public, the CSRC said in a statement to Bloomberg on Tuesday.