A brief rebound in China’s struggling economy showed worrying new signs of flickering out, heaping pressure on Beijing to take bolder steps to rev up growth, the Wall Street Journal reported. Factory activity slid deeper into contraction in November as domestic and foreign orders dried up, while, in an ominous sign for consumer spending, activity in the services sector shrank for the first time this year, according to business surveys released Thursday. Only construction registered any expansion compared with the previous month as government spending on infrastructure increased.

Sri Lanka said on Wednesday that it has reached an agreement in principle with a group of creditors including India and Japan on debt restructuring, a crucial move toward unlocking a second instalment of a $2.9 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund, the Associated Press reported. The agreement with the Official Creditor Committee covers approximately $5.9 billion of outstanding public debt and consists of a mix of long-term maturity extension and reduction in interest rates, a statement from the country's Finance Ministry said.

Binance Holdings Ltd.’s attempt to turn the page on costly regulatory violations faces a test in Thailand, where the world’s largest crypto exchange will soon start a new trading venue with one of Asia’s richest men, Bloomberg News reported. The venture with Sarath Ratanavadi’s Gulf Energy Development Pcl recently received the required licenses, but Binance’s guilty plea last week and $4.3 billion in penalties for US anti-money laundering and sanctions contraventions have cast a shadow over the planned domestic digital-asset platform.

In Courtroom No. 29, a gray, musty cubbyhole of a space wedged into the heart of Hong Kong’s tony banking district, Judge Linda Chan presides over China’s great financial reckoning, Bloomberg News reported. One after the other, the high-powered attorneys and executives of distressed real-estate developers — the behemoths that had once powered the economic boom that made China the envy of the world — come before her to plead for their financial lives: China Evergrande Group, Sunac China Holdings, Jiayuan International Group, Kaisa Group Holdings.

Vietnam’s Bamboo Airways JSC is rebuilding under its new chief executive officer, who is intent on proving the indebted six-year-old carrier has a future after shedding two-thirds of its fleet and 80% of its network, Bloomberg News reported. “We need our passengers to believe in our future,” Luong Hoai Nam said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We need to make our investors, shareholders and potential investors believe in our future.

The Insolvency & Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) is expected to finalise crucial amendments to regulations - from those seeking to make life simpler for home buyers to those for personal and companies' insolvency proceedings, insolvency professionals and liquidation - next month as it seeks to improve the seven-year-old regime and improve its overall functioning, the Times of India reported.

Chinese authorities are taking more forceful action to contain the growing financial troubles of one of the country’s biggest shadow lenders, the Wall Street Journal reported. Police in Beijing said over the weekend that they had taken “criminal coercive measures”—a euphemism for arrests—against multiple employees of Zhongzhi Enterprise. The privately held conglomerate operates several businesses that sold investment products to many wealthy individuals and companies in China, and has struggled for months to make promised payments to investors.

Profits at China's industrial firms extended gains for a third month in October, albeit at a slower pace, suggesting more policy support from Beijing is needed to help shore up growth in the world's second-largest economy, Reuters reported. The 2.7% year-on-year rise sees profit growth narrow back to single-digits, following an 11.9% increase in September and a 17.2% gain in August, putting pressure on authorities to extend further assistance to manufacturers as soft global demand continues to dog policymakers heading into 2024.

Turkey’s central bank has raised interest rates to 40 percent, its highest level in nearly two decades, in a significant move to tame the country’s runaway inflation after the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had previously defied economic convention by cutting rates to slow price increases, the New York Times reported. The increase of 5 percentage points on Thursday, which was larger than expected and the sixth consecutive increase by the bank, came as inflation in Turkey is running at 61.36 percent.

Chinese authorities said they recently opened criminal investigations into the money management business of Zhongzhi Enterprise Group Co., days after the embattled shadow banking giant revealed a shortfall of $36.4 billion in its balance sheet, Bloomberg News reported. Police in Beijing said in a statement on WeChat that they took “criminal mandatory measures” against multiple suspects, identifying one by the last name Xie. They urged investors to report cases or provide leads to the authorities, including filing complaints online.