Thailand’s prime minister pledged to keep up his campaign to pressure the central bank into a rate cut, fueling a buildup of market sentiment that the dispute will result in monetary easing, Bloomberg News reported. “There is plenty of room” to cut the benchmark rate, leaving enough monetary policy space in case of future crisis, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin told reporters in Bangkok. He cited Thailand’s shrinking economy and negative inflation as evidence of weak business and consumption activity, that’s compelling enough for an off-cycle rate decision.

Disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Do Kwon should be extradited to the U.S. to face trial on fraud charges, rather than to his native South Korea, a court in the tiny Balkan country of Montenegro has ruled, the Wall Street Journal reported. Kwon’s lawyers have three days to appeal the ruling by the High Court in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, a spokeswoman for the court said Wednesday. The appeals court will have the final word in the case, she added. A local lawyer for Kwon, Goran Rodić, called the ruling illegal and pledged to appeal.

Indian central bank officials rejected the International Monetary Fund’s view that government debt could exceed the size of the economy, predicting a more rapid easing in the debt ratio than the Washington, D.C.-based lender estimates, Bloomberg News reported. General government debt — which is the combined borrowing of the central government and the states — can be reduced to 73.4% of gross domestic product by 2030-31, nearly 5 percentage points below the IMF’s projected trajectory of 78.2% for the period, central bank officials led by Deputy Governor Michael Patra wrote in a paper.

Turkey’s central bank left its key interest rate unchanged at 45% on Thursday, pausing a series of aggressive rate hikes aimed at taming high inflation, the Associated Press reported. The central bank said it was keeping the benchmark one-week repo rate on hold, according to a statement. It was the bank's first interest rate decision under its newly appointed governor, Fatih Karahan. The move was in line with expectations that the rate would be kept constant after the bank said last month that monetary tightness needed to “establish the disinflation course” was achieved.

Lenders to large stressed firms, with a default of at least ₹ 1,000 crore each, have taken smaller haircuts under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) than those with exposure to smaller firms, showed the data sourced from the bankruptcy regulator, the Economic Times of India reported. Creditors recovered 32.9% of their admitted claims from 138 large stressed firms until December 2023 since the IBC came into being in late 2016, as per the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India data.

Chinese banks have approved property development loans of $17.20 billion as part of a special mechanism to inject liquidity into the sector, but detailed statements show some loans to distressed developers are only adjustments of existing credit, Reuters reported.

India’s market regulator has found a hole of more than $240 million in the accounts of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd., dealing another blow to the embattled media firm less than a month after its merger with Sony Group Corp’s local unit collapsed, Bloomberg News reported. As part of its investigation into the Zee founders, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, or Sebi, found that about 20 billion rupees ($241 million) may have been diverted from the company. That’s roughly ten times of what was initially estimated by Sebi investigators.

Hong Kong's central bank issued guidance for authorized institutions interested in offering custody services for digital assets as the territory attempts to reclaim its title as a crypto hub, CoinDesk.com reported. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) guidance issued on Tuesday adds to the licensing regime introduced last year that gives crypto exchanges a pathway to operate in a regulated manner.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) at Kolkata on Tuesday, February 20, allowed insolvency proceedings against a 104-year-old company for failure to clear dues of over Rs 4 crore, according to a report on barandbench.com. The case involves the Ahmedabad-based private construction firm Chevrox Construction Pvt. Ltd against state-owned Bridge and Roof Co (India) Ltd. Bridge and Roof is a public sector enterprise (PSU) under the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and comes under the administrative control of the Ministry of Heavy Industries.

Turkey put an $8.5 billion sukuk deal with the United Arab Emirates on hold as it looks to explore cheaper options in the global bond markets, Bloomberg News reported. Ankara views the yield demanded by Abu Dhabi Development Holding Co PJSC, the fund owned by the United Arab Emirates, as unfavorable. Investor expectations of interest-rate cuts by major central banks later this year are fueling appetite for emerging-market debt, a shift in sentiment that Turkish corporates and the government are eager to capitalize on.