Sri Lanka’s bondholders aren’t living up to their obligations and should cancel debt to allow the country to get out of its economic crisis, a group of international academics said in a letter, Bloomberg News reported. Private creditors own almost 40% of the country’s external debt, mostly in the form of International Sovereign Bonds, but higher interest rates mean they receive more than half of debt payments, the group said in the letter, which was signed by more than 180 professors from around the world.

Declining world supply chain pressures are being challenged by new disruptions in China tied to the coronavirus pandemic, the New York Federal Reserve reported on Friday, Reuters reported. The regional Fed bank's December Global Supply Chain Pressure Index ticked down to 1.18 from November's revised 1.23 reading. According to the report, supply chain pressures have been easing notably since the spring of last year and bottomed in September, and have since then been bouncing around in a tight range.

Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume, is making a new public effort to show it's taking compliance in the crypto market seriously, YahooFinance.com reported. On Friday, the company announced it will join the Association of Certified Sanctions Specialists (ACSS) to enhance the expertise of its international compliance team.

The United States and Japan on Friday launched a new task force to promote human rights and international labor standards in supply chains and said they would invite other governments to join the initiative, Reuters reported. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai signed a memorandum on the initiative in Washington with Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura.

Public sector banks-owned National Asset Reconstruction Company (NARCL) has emerged as the highest bidder for the twin SREI companies. According to sources, the bad bank has bid Rs 5,555 crore for the two companies — Srei Infrastructure Finance (SIFL) & Srei Equipment Finance (SEFL), the Economic Times of India reported. Authum Infrastructure is the second highest bidder with its offer of Rs 5,526 crore. The third bidder, comprising Varde Partners and Arena Investors, is understood to have stayed away.

China's central bank and the banking and insurance regulator have established a dynamic adjustment mechanism on mortgage rates for first-time home buyers, the central bank said on Thursday, in a bid to further support the property sector. For cities where the selling prices of new homes fall month-on-month and year-on-year for three consecutive months, the floor on mortgage rates can be lowered or abolished for first-time home buyers in phases, according to a statement by the People's Bank of China.

China’s services sector contracted for a fourth straight month in December, underscoring Covid-19’s economic costs just days before the country reopens its borders to revive growth, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Caixin services purchasing managers index, published on Thursday, rose to 48.0 in December, indicating the slowdown of activity in the sector had moderated from the previous month, when the gauge was at 46.7. A reading below 50 indicates contraction.

The world’s pile of negative-yielding debt has vanished, as Japanese bonds finally joined global peers in offering zero or positive income, Bloomberg News reported. The global stock of bonds where investors received sub-zero yields peaked at $18.4 trillion in late 2020, according to Bloomberg’s Global Aggregate Index of the debt, when central banks worldwide were keeping rates at or below zero and buying bonds to ensure yields were repressed.

Sunac China Holdings Ltd. received bondholder approval for an extension on its domestic debt, according to people familiar with the matter, buying the developer more time to deal with its liquidity crunch amid improved policy support, Bloomberg News reported. The company’s Sunac Real Estate unit secured an agreement from debt holders to extend maturities on nine onshore notes and an asset-backed security worth about 16 billion yuan ($2.3 billion) in total, the people said, requesting not to be identified because the matter is private.

People's Bank of China (PBOC) said on Wednesday that a high amount of foreign currency it has bought recently was a result of commercial banks converting their foreign exchange holdings with the central bank into yuan reserves, Reuters reported. China's central bank bought a net 63.6 billion yuan ($9.24 billion) worth of foreign exchange in November，according to Reuters calculations based on PBOC data released earlier on Wednesday, marking the biggest net purchases since October 2014.