A development bank China launched with its fellow Brics countries was supposed to reshape international finance. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine now risks turning it into a zombie bank, the Wall Street Journal reported.

An Australian company that clinched the first U.S. clearance for its at-home Covid-19 test kit has collapsed into liquidation after a sale to a competitor fell through, Bloomberg News reported. Covid-19 test maker Ellume Ltd.’s sale to Hough Consolidated Pty Ltd. unraveled this week, and the company is now winding down operations, according to a statement. Hough had agreed to buy the company in December for $38 million (A$56 million), but the deal fell apart after Hough made repeated requests to extend deadlines tied to the agreement.

China's economy stumbled in May with industrial output and retail sales growth missing forecasts, Reuters reported. The economic rebound seen earlier this year has lost momentum in the second quarter, prompting China's central bank to cut some key interest rates this week for the first time in nearly a year, with expectations of more to come.

Beijing is planning major steps to revive the country’s flagging economy, including the possibility of billions of dollars in new infrastructure spending, and looser rules to encourage property investors to buy more homes, the Wall Street Journal reported. The push follows a series of interest rate cuts by China’s central bank this week, including one on Thursday which cut a key policy rate for the first time since August, as fresh data showed the country’s economic recovery is flickering out.

New Zealand slipped into recession as the economy shrank in the first quarter, data showed on Thursday, reducing the risk the central bank would need to hike interest rates further but creating a new headwind for the government's re-election hopes, Reuters reported. Gross domestic product (GDP) matched analysts' expectations of a 0.1% contraction in the March quarter but was well below the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's (RBNZ) forecast of 0.3% growth. Furthermore, fourth-quarter GDP was revised to a contraction of 0.7% from a decline of 0.6%.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday expressed dissatisfaction with Pakistan’s recently presented budget, a blow for the cash-strapped country which has only two weeks left until its bailout programme expires, Reuters reported. Pakistan has barely enough currency reserves to cover one month's imports. It had hoped to have $1.1 billion of the funds released in November - but the IMF has insisted on a number of conditions before it makes any more disbursements.

Two crypto lenders with links to South Korea halted withdrawals in quick succession, a reminder of lingering risks even after regulators around the world tightened oversight of the industry, Bloomberg News reported. Token prices appeared to shrug off the statements from Delio and Haru Invest, underlining the relatively small corner of the crypto lending market affected by the trouble at the two companies.

The bankruptcy regulator will prepare a "common panel" of insolvency professionals (IPs) from those registered with it and share the list in advance with the adjudicating authority to choose from to oversee various cases of resolution or liquidation from July 1, the Economic Times of India reported. At present, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) is required to recommend the IP's name only after receiving reference from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in a corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP).

Binance's Cyprus unit has applied to be removed from Cyprus' register of crypto asset service providers, the securities regulator website showed on Wednesday, in a move Binance said would allow it to focus on its larger European businesses, Reuters reported. It was unclear when Binance applied to deregister. The exchange, the world's biggest, announced its registration with the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission in October 2022. A source at the regulator said on Wednesday that Binance never launched its business in Cyprus.

A major Kazakh financial lobby group thwarted an effort to set a much lower cap on unsecured loans popular with the vast majority of the workforce, all but undoing one of the signature initiatives in the country after last year’s deadly riots, Bloomberg News reported. Shaken by the unrest that’s been blamed on corruption and inequality, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev tried to claw back popularity with such measures as legislation on individual bankruptcy filings.