A quartet of outside law firms and accountants will help probe how banks ended up taking control of more than $2 billion at a key China Evergrande Group subsidiary, the Wall Street Journal reported. Last week, the highly indebted Chinese real-estate developer and its Evergrande Property Services Group Ltd. unit said lenders had enforced their rights over 13.4 billion yuan, or about $2.1 billion, of bank deposits pledged by the subsidiary to guarantee third-party borrowing.

As millions of people in Shanghai line up for coronavirus tests, authorities are promising tax refunds for shopkeepers in the closed-down metropolis and to keep the world's busiest port functioning to limit disruption to industry and trade, the Associated Press reported. This week's shutdown of most activity in China's most populous city to contain virus outbreaks jolted global financial markets that already were on edge about Russia's war on Ukraine, higher U.S. interest rates and a Chinese economic slowdown.

The war in Ukraine is making a bad situation worse for Japanese power providers struggling with the energy crisis, forcing more companies to quit the business, the Japan Times reported. In the last month, at least four companies halted power retail operations, as a surge in wholesale electricity prices makes it challenging to procure stable supply and turn a profit. At least seven temporarily halted taking on new customers for some plans. For the fiscal year ending Thursday, 14 Japanese power companies have filed for bankruptcy, according to Teikoku Databank.

The president of Britain’s Supreme Court said Wednesday that he and a colleague were stepping down from their roles on Hong Kong’s highest court because the administration of the Chinese territory had “departed from values of political freedom and freedom of expression,” the New York Times reported. Their resignations will heighten scrutiny of Hong Kong’s British-style legal system, which the former British colony kept even after it returned to Chinese control in 1997.

Indian private lender Axis Bank has decided to bulk up its credit card and retail businesses with a $1.6-billion purchase of Citigroup Inc.'s local consumer banking arm, Reuters reported. The deal announced on Wednesday is Axis Bank's largest by far and would expand its credit card customer base by 31%, narrowing the gap with the third-biggest player ICICI Bank.

Auditors have resigned from a series of Chinese property companies, reflecting the challenges of verifying these businesses’ financial health after a punishing sector-wide downturn, the Wall Street Journal reported. Audit firms are probably taking a hard look at the developers’ results after a series of revelations about off-balance-sheet debts, analysts and investors say. Pandemic-related restrictions in mainland China and Hong Kong have also made it harder to collect information.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which are exporters of steel products, will have a huge impact on global steel demand and trade if it lasts for a long time, the head of a Japanese steel industry group said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. "Even before the Ukraine crisis, we had faced three risk factors to dent steel demand -- China's slowdown, global chip shortage and soaring energy and natural resources prices," Japan Iron and Steel Federation Chairman Eiji Hashimoto told a news conference.

Japan will ban the export of high-end cars and other luxury goods to Russia in its latest response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the trade ministry said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The partial ban on Russia-bound auto items, which account for more than half of Japan's exports to Russia, came after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made a commitment to place more sanctions on Russia at a Group of Seven summit last week.

Sri Lanka will have to undergo debt restructuring as strongly suggested by the International Monetary Fund in order to secure financing from creditors, according to Citigroup Global Markets, Bloomberg News reported. The prescription follows IMF’s observation that fiscal consolidation efforts alone to pare debt to safe levels would be too large to be economically and politically feasible. While the IMF didn’t specify what a safe level is, Citi sees reduction to a 79.7% public debt ratio witnessed between 2010-18 as a good benchmark from 119% level last year.

Realty developer Supertech has been declared insolvent after the Delhi bench of the National Company Law Tribunal admitted a petition filed by the Union Bank of India for non-payment of dues, the Economic Times of India reported. The NCLT has appointed Hitesh Goel as the insolvency resolution professional (IRP). The company which was under stress and was in the process of demolishing two illegal towers at its Noida project following the order of the Supreme Court, has multiple under construction projects in NCR.