Terraform Labs, the company behind the stablecoin TerraUSD, which collapsed and roiled cryptocurrency markets in 2022, filed for chapter 11 protection, according to court papers filed on Sunday, Reuters reported. Singapore-based Terraform Labs, in a filing with the bankruptcy court in Delaware, listed assets and liabilities in the range of $100-$500 million. Terraform Labs said it would meet all financial obligations to employees and vendors during the Chapter 11 case without requiring additional financing. It also plans to continue Web3 offerings expansion.

Premier Li Qiang called for more effective measures to stabilize China’s slumping stock market after the mainland’s benchmark CSI 300 hit a five-year low on Monday, Bloomberg News reported. Chinese stocks have sold off for most of the past year. The factors behind the drop range from the protracted crisis in the housing market to persistent deflationary pressures in the wider economy. Beijing’s policy response, meanwhile, has failed to buttress sentiment among investors hoping for even easier monetary conditions or a big lift in fiscal stimulus.

The number of foreclosed homes in China rose 43% year-on-year in 2023, according to a private survey on Monday, highlighting a worrying trend of rising mortgage delinquencies amid a sustained property market slump and a patchy economic recovery, Reuters reported. The number of foreclosed homes up for auction stood at 389,000 units last year, said China Index Academy, a major independent real estate research firm. A total of 99,000 units worth a combined 150 billion yuan ($20.84 billion) were successfully sold at auctions, the firm said.

South Korea will take steps to make its financial markets more investor friendly and attractive to foreigners, the financial regulator said on Monday, Reuters reported. The comments by vice chairman of the Financial Services Commission (FSC), Kim So-young, came at a meeting with foreign financial firms in Seoul to discuss ways of helping them expand business, in the wake of November's ban on short-selling. "The government will make various efforts to globalise the financial industry, especially to build a more favourable environment for foreign financial firms," Kim said.

One in six Japanese companies have become “zombie” firms unable to keep up with debt payments from profits alone, putting them in a vulnerable position should the central bank raise interest rates this year, as is widely expected, Bloomberg News reported. The number of zombie companies hit 251,000 or 17% of the total number in the 12 months to March, jumping almost a third from the previous year, according to a report by Teikoku Databank on Friday. The number was the highest since 2011, when Japan’s economy was battered by an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, the firm said.

Debt-stricken Sri Lanka’s economic reform program is yielding the first signs of recovery, but the improvements still need to translate into improved living conditions for its people, the International Monetary Fund said on Friday, the Associated Press reported. Sri Lanka has been struggling with an economic crisis since declaring bankruptcy in April 2022 with more than $83 billion in debt, more than half of it to foreign creditors. The crisis caused severe shortages of food, fuel and other necessities. Strident public protests led to the ouster of then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The rupture of one of the world's busiest shipping routes has exposed the vulnerability of China's export-reliant economy to supply snarls and external demand shocks, Reuters reported. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, Premier Li Qiang emphasised the need to keep global supply chains "stable and smooth", without referring specifically to the Red Sea.

Vietnam’s Shipbuilding Industry Corp., which is set to declare bankruptcy in the first quarter, missed out on a recent recovery in ship orders, with only seven currently in its order book, a yard manager says, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company, also known as SBIC, couldn’t compete with bigger rivals in China and South Korea, the manager adds. The shipbuilder’s bankruptcy is inevitable, Minister of Transport Nguyen Xuan Sang said in a meeting with employees.

New Zealand houses are selling faster as signs that interest rates may have peaked encourage more buyers to enter the market, Bloomberg News reported. The median time to sell a house in December was 36 days, Real Estate Institute of New Zealand data showed Thursday in Wellington. That’s the lowest since March 2022 and down from a peak of 60 days in February last year. House prices in New Zealand are recovering after a prolonged slump that coincided with a steep rise in mortgage interest rates.

A South Korean bankruptcy court judge has called on the government to bolster regulation in the crypto industry, claiming investors need more protection, CryptoNews.com reported. Per Newsis, the claims were made by Judge Lee Seok-jun, of the Seoul Bankruptcy Court. Lee wrote a paper on “regulations intended to protect virtual asset investors.” The paper was published in the most recent issue of the Court of Korea’s academic journal Sabeub. A slew of crypto-related legal changes come into force in July this year when the Virtual Asset User Protection Act becomes law.