The Bank of Japan is under pressure to revise policy again at its meeting ending Wednesday after investors repeatedly attacked the central bank’s new 0.5% cap for the 10-year government bond yield, the Wall Street Journal reported. The battle between the BOJ and the markets has upended what are expected to be the final months of Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda‘s decade in the job. He has devoted his term to keeping interest rates ultralow, a policy that many market players believe is likely to end this year with inflation in Japan nearing 4%.

China's Country Garden had some rare good news for the cash-squeezed property sector with an offshore debt repayment on Tuesday, but a closer look reveals just how much developers may still struggle to access capital, developers and analysts said, Reuters reported. China's largest developer by sales said it repaid its 4.75% dollar bonds with outstanding principal totalling $625 million. The payment was due on Tuesday.

The co-founders of failed cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital are now courting investors for a new venture that looks to capitalize on a growing list of bankruptcies in the space, CNBC.com reported. Kyle Davies and Su Zhu are listed as founding members in a pitch deck obtained by CNBC for a distressed debt marketplace called GTX. Davies and Zhu founded Three Arrows Capital, a once $10 billion Singapore-based hedge fund that filed for bankruptcy in July.

China's economy slowed sharply in the fourth quarter due to stringent COVID curbs, dragging down 2022 growth to one of its worst in nearly half a century and raising pressure on policymakers to unveil more stimulus this year, Reuters reported. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 2.9% in October-December from a year earlier, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Tuesday, slower than the third-quarter's 3.9% pace. The rate still exceeded the second quarter's 0.4% expansion and market expectations of a 1.8% gain.

Chinese financial regulators and the nation’s biggest bad-debt management companies plan to offer as much as 160 billion yuan ($24 billion) of refinancing support to high-quality developers in the first quarter, Bloomberg News reported. Under the plan first announced on Friday with little details, the People’s Bank of China will channel 80 billion yuan of loans through China Huarong Asset Management Co. and its peers to selected developers at an annual rate of 1.75%, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private.

China Evergrande Group said PwC resigned as its auditor on Monday, adding to the pressure on the developer at the epicenter of China’s property crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Evergrande’s board recommended the resignation of PwC after the two firms couldn’t “agree on the timetable and the scope of work in respect of the assessment on the group’s going concern basis,” as well as the “procedures required for the assets impairment assessment,” according to a regulatory filing. In its Jan.

A judge in Connecticut has placed tighter restrictions on Chinese businessman and media entrepreneur Guo Wengui and his followers to end what she described as an alleged campaign of online and in-person harassment directed at a court-appointed trustee and others involved in his chapter 11 case, Reuters reported.

Japan’s financial watchdog expects the local unit of Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto empire FTX will repay funds to customers starting next month, according to a senior official, Bloomberg News reported. “We have been in close communication with FTX Japan,” said Mamoru Yanase, deputy director-general of the Financial Services Agency’s Strategy Development and Management Bureau. A mid-February timeline for withdrawals announced last month by the firm is likely a product of such communication so “we are expecting that they will properly take steps based on that,” he said.

Pakistan’s prime minister said Thursday that the United Arab Emirates agreed to extend a $2 billion loan to his country and provide an additional $1 billion as his nation struggles to recover from devastating floods this summer and a dire economic crisis, the Associated Press reported. Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s office made the announcement after he met with the leader of the UAE, Abu Dhabi ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that it was considering providing up to $11 billion to Pakistan, a potential lifeline to a country facing default, the Wall Street Journal reported. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar in recent months have said they might also offer help to Pakistan, with potential loans and investments from Gulf nations now totaling at least $22 billion after the latest announcement from Riyadh. Gulf countries have said they could extend a similar level of support to Egypt, which is also struggling economically.