Chinese bourses have halted more than 40 initial public offerings (IPOs) in Shanghai and Shenzhen amid a regulatory probe into several intermediaries in the deals, according to official exchange disclosures, Reuters reported. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange suspended more than 30 IPOs, including public share sale plans by BYD Co.'s chip unit, on Aug. 18, according to exchange filings. The Shanghai Stock Exchange has pressed the pause button on eight IPOs targeting the city's tech-focused STAR Market since Aug. 19.

India plans to raise 6 trillion rupees ($81 billion) from selling state-owned infrastructure assets over next four years to help bolster the government’s finances and plug its budget deficit, Bloomberg News reported. The plan will include sale of road and railway assets, airports, power transmission lines and gas pipelines, said the people who asked not to be identified as they aren’t authorized to share the details. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to make the road-map public at 5 p.m. Monday.

Afghanistan’s new Taliban-led government faces a series of shocks that probably will lead to a weaker currency, faster inflation and capital controls, according to the nation’s exiled central bank chief, Bloomberg News reported. The Afghani, as the tender is known, likely will see renewed weakness after it reached a record low last week, Ajmal Ahmady, governor of Da Afghanistan Bank, known as DAB, said in an interview for Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast. That could spur a pickup in consumer-price increases by making imports more expensive, he said.

China Evergrande Group pledged to fix its debt problems following a rare public rebuke from regulators as the developer struggles to stave off a liquidity crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Evergrande said that it will do its best to maintain stable operations, resolve debt risks, and keep stability in housing and financial markets. The People’s Bank of China and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission earlier told the group to address its debt woes and refrain from spreading “untrue” information.

Japan's factory activity growth slowed in August, while that of the services sector shrank at the fastest pace since May last year, highlighting the increasingly heavy toll a recent wave of COVID-19 infections is taking on the economy, Reuters reported. Manufacturers mostly withstood the impact of the coronavirus resurgence, due largely to the highly contagious Delta variant that is forcing governments in Japan and elsewhere in Asia to put in place lockdowns or other curbs.

A major container terminal at China’s Ningbo-Zhoushan Port remained shut a week after operations were suspended from a single Covid-19 case, with dozens of ships lining up to load cargo for western markets ahead of the year-end shopping season, the Wall Street Journal reported. The congestion at Meishan terminal, which isn’t expected to resume full operations before the end of the month, is spreading to other ports like Shanghai and Hong Kong as big operators divert ships away from Ningbo.

A telecom carrier and a retailer are showing a mirror to India’s tryst with assisted corporate demise and rebirth, according to a Bloomberg News commentary. As the five-year-old bankruptcy experiment flounders, blame it on what development scholars refer to as “isomorphic mimicry”: Emerging economies ape the form of successful Western institutions but leave them dysfunctional and devoid of content, almost guaranteeing their failure, according to the commentary.

An independent review of the Australian stock exchange outage last November found that the bourse operator's new trading system was not ready to go live, the country's corporate regulator said on Monday, Reuters reported. The outage on Nov. 16 last year nearly wiped out an entire session and damaged the reputation of the bourse operator ASX Ltd. The independent review conducted by IBM Australia found that while the ASX met industry practices in 58 out of 75 of the capabilities assessed, it missed in 17.

China’s top manager of distressed assets said it would post a massive loss and expects to receive a capital infusion from state-owned financial institutions, avoiding a messy default that would have had wide repercussions for Asia’s credit markets, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The International Monetary Fund said it will prevent Afghanistan from gaining access to some $450 million in aid in the wake of the Taliban's takeover the country, after the U.S. Treasury Department moved to block the funds, Politico reported. The IMF, with U.S. backing, is issuing billions of dollars worth of new “special drawing rights,” a reserve asset that can be converted to government-backed money, to aid poorer countries. A portion of those assets was scheduled to be allocated to Afghanistan next week, an event that generated urgent pushback from Republican lawmakers.