The World Bank is in advanced talks to potentially double its exposure to Turkey to $35 billion to help stabilize the Middle East’s largest non-oil economy, Bloomberg News reported. The discussions include a World Bank pledge of as much as $18 billion for projects over the next three years, in addition to more than $17 billion in programs already in place, the people said, asking not to be named because the talks aren’t public. The funding would include direct lending to the government as well as support for the private sector.

Italy is preparing to cancel its controversial membership in China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, engaging in an elaborate diplomatic dance to avoid angering Beijing and triggering retaliation against Italian businesses, the Wall Street Journal reported. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani held talks in Beijing on Sunday and Monday to facilitate as smooth an exit as possible from the initiative while laying the groundwork for alternative economic deals with China.

China's largest private property developer, Country Garden, faces a deadline for making interest payments on two U.S. dollar bonds on Tuesday, just days after dodging an onshore debt default with a last-minute payment extension deal, Reuters reported. Country Garden last month said it had not paid coupons on the bonds due on Aug. 6 totalling $22.5 million, exacerbating market fear that the developer was slipping into a worsening liquidity squeeze. Both payments had 30-day grace periods, ending on Tuesday.

China’s housing crisis has engulfed the country’s private developers, producing record waves of defaults and leaving a shrinking group of survivors, Bloomberg News reported. Out of the nation’s top 50 private-sector developers by dollar bond issuance, 34 have already suffered delinquencies on offshore debt, according to Bloomberg-compiled data as of Sept. 1. The remaining 16, including Country Garden Holdings Co., face a combined $1.48 billion of onshore and offshore public bond payments for either interest or principal in September. The monthly amount is the highest until January.

Financial institutions in Singapore are scouring client records after police raided a sprawling criminal organization with stockpiles of cash—and dozens of bank accounts, the Wall Street Journal reported. Police officers and agents in the city-state arrested 10 foreign nationals in mid-August on charges including fraud and money laundering. The arrests followed a series of raids that led to the discovery of $630 million worth of properties, cars, luxury goods and cash, and $81 million of assets held across 35 bank accounts.

Japanese household spending suffered its biggest drop in nearly 2-1/2 years squeezed by rising prices, although volatility in some items meant the outlook might not be as gloomy as the headline figures suggested, Reuters reported. Japan's economy grew much faster than expected in the second quarter, helped by the end of COVID-19 curbs and a resurgence in inbound tourism, and analysts expect private consumption to support overall growth amid weakness in global demand.

South Korea’s inflation outstripped forecasts in August partly on the back of higher energy costs, reinforcing the case for the central bank to keep the door open to further policy tightening to rein in prices, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices advanced 3.4% from a year earlier, quickening from 2.3% in July, the statistics office reported Tuesday. The Bank of Korea is keeping its options open for potential rate hikes until it’s confident price pressures are well under control.

Australia's corporate regulator said on Tuesday it was taking Westpac Banking Corp to court over its alleged failure to respond to customers' financial hardship notices between 2015 and 2022 within the required administrative time frame, Reuters reported. Under Section 72 of Australia's National Credit Code, an individual with overdue payments can request a change to the terms of their credit contract on the grounds of financial hardship, and creditors are expected to provide a response in writing within 21 days of being informed.

China allowed large cities to cut down payments for homebuyers and encouraged lenders to lower rates on existing mortgages in its latest attempts to halt a slide in the country’s residential property market, Bloomberg News reported. The nationwide minimum down payment will be 20% for first-time buyers and 30% for second-time purchasers, according to a joint statement from the People’s Bank of China and National Administration of Financial Regulation on Thursday. The mortgage-rate cuts will be negotiated between banks and customers. Both policies go into effect Sept. 25.

In the beginning, Hui Ka Yan followed a simple formula. Borrow to buy land. Sell homes on the site before they are built. Use the cash to pay lenders and finance the next real estate project. For two decades, starting in the mid-1990s, this approach was enormously lucrative as Chinese home prices soared. It transformed Hui, a former steel industry employee from a rural village, into China’s richest man. And it turned his company, China Evergrande Group, into a vast real-estate empire.