State builder PT Wijaya Karya clinched an agreement with some of Indonesia’s biggest banks to restructure 20.58 trillion rupiah ($1.31 billion) of debt, after the government’s infrastructure push saddled it with an unmanageable pile of liabilities, Bloomberg News reported. The state-owned construction company said it signed the deal with 11 institutions, including PT Bank Mandiri, PT Bank Negara Indonesia, PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia, PT Bank Tabungan Negara, PT Bank Syariah Indonesia and PT Bank Panin.

Turkey’s central bank raised its key interest rate by another 2.5 percentage points on Thursday, pressing ahead with a series of hikes aimed at combating inflation that reached nearly 65% in December, the Associated Press reported. The bank brought its benchmark rate to 45%. It's the eighth interest rate hike since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has abandoned his unconventional economic policies that economists say helped trigger a currency crisis and drove up the cost of living. Many households were left struggling to afford basic goods.

A key offshore bondholder group of China Evergrande plans to join a petition to liquidate the developer at a hearing in a Hong Kong court on Monday, Reuters reported. The bondholder group owns more than $2 billion in offshore notes guaranteed by Evergrande and its support to a winding-up petition against the world's most indebted developer could increase the chances of an immediate liquidation order from the court, lawyers in the industry said.

China’s real-estate crisis has dragged down the economy, caused massive layoffs and pushed multibillion-dollar companies to the point of collapse. Economists think it is about to get worse, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Sales of newly built homes in China fell 6% last year, returning to a level not seen since 2016, according to China’s statistics bureau. Secondhand home prices in its four wealthiest cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen—declined by between 11% and 14% in December from the year before, according to the broker Centaline Property.

China said it will cut the reserve requirement ratio for banks within two weeks and hinted at more support measures to come, an unusually early disclosure that shows mounting urgency across President Xi Jinping’s government to shore up the economy and halt a $6 trillion stock-market rout, Bloomberg News reported. The RRR — which determines the amount of cash banks have to keep in reserve — will be lowered by 0.5 percentage points on Feb.

Malaysia is considering initiating legal proceedings against banks related to the troubled 1MDB state fund, as the government works to recoup assets lost from the multibillion-dollar scandal, Bloomberg News reported. “A number of foreign banks” facilitated fund transfers linked to 1MDB without conducting proper processes “at that material time,” Johari Abdul Ghani, who leads a taskforce to recover 1MDB assets, said in a statement. He did not identify the banks.

China's plunging stock market is leading to losses on billions of dollars worth of derivatives linked to the country's equity indexes, forcing a vicious cycle of selling in stocks and futures contracts as market participants manage their risks, Reuters reported. Stock markets in Hong Kong, opens new tab and in mainland China plunged on Monday, extending a long spell of weakness driven by an exit of foreign investors alarmed by China's wobbly economy and a lack of stimulus measures.

Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda kept investors in the dark over when he will scrap the world’s last negative interest rate while leaving little doubt that a move is in the pipeline, Bloomberg News reported. The BOJ maintained its -0.1% short-term rate and kept its yield curve control parameters intact Tuesday. It also updated its price and growth forecasts with no overall change to the picture of an economy heading slowly toward its first rate hike since 2007.

Thailand's central bank chief, under fire from the prime minister for not cutting rates, said slower-than-expected economic growth was not a crisis as portrayed by the government, nor would it be revived by its quick-hit stimulus measures, Reuters reported. The Bank of Thailand's current policy rate is broadly neutral, Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput told Reuters on Tuesday ahead of the central bank's next rate meeting on Feb. 7, adding that the country was not facing a deflationary situation.

An Australian regulator is reviewing how pension funds value unlisted assets, ranging from private equity to office towers, as part of a long-term push to limit risks within the illiquid holdings popular in the A$2.5 trillion ($1.7 trillion) sector, Reuters reported. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) requested information from multiple pension funds in late 2023 as part of the review into unlisted asset valuation governance, according to a previously unreported November 2023 letter seen by Reuters.