Easing property curbs may do little to brighten the outlook for Chinese residential sales as weak home-buyer confidence remains a key hurdle, with Covid’s spread adding extra near-term threats, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. China’s central bank reduced the reserve requirement ratio for most banks by 25 basis points Friday, giving lenders a modest cash boost. It also kept the one-year policy interest rate unchanged, disappointing the majority of economists who predicted a cut.

Bank of India has filed an insolvency petition against Future Retail Ltd (FRL) at the bankruptcy court for non-payment of dues, the retailer said in a notice issued to stock exchanges on Thursday evening, the Economic Times of India reported. The company said it defaulted on payment of monies due in terms of framework agreement it entered with the bank. The decision of lenders to file an application with National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) will have a bearing on the Rs 24,713-crore offer that Reliance Industries-linked entities made to acquire Future Group companies in August 2020.

Nearly 400 million people are estimated to be under some form of lockdown in China as officials try to stop a fast-moving Omicron outbreak that is beginning to weigh on the world’s second-largest economy, the New York Times reported. Hundreds of thousands of people have been sent to isolation facilities in China, and millions more have been told to stay in their homes. Officials in dozens of cities have shut down normal daily life across the country in a race to track and trace the coronavirus and stamp out China’s worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic.

The Turkish lira was on Thursday unmoved by the central bank's decision to hold its policy rate at 14%, while Russia's rouble slipped ahead of planned easing in capital controls next week, Reuters reported. The lira was down 0.2% at 14.61 a dollar after the widely expected central bank move, which came even as annual inflation was estimated to rise beyond the current 61%. The increase in price pressures has been driven by rising energy costs and supply shocks, but inflation should start to ease due to the central bank's actions, it said.

China's race to stop the spread of COVID-19 is clogging highways and ports, stranding workers and shutting countless factories - disruptions that are rippling through global supply chains for goods ranging from electric vehicles to iPhones, Reuters reported. While some factory owners try to tough it out through "closed loop" management that keeps workers isolated inside, some said that is becoming harder to sustain given the extent of local COVID-19 curbs aimed at heading off the Omicron variant, complicating efforts to procure materials or ship products.

Sri Lanka was downgraded deeper into junk by Fitch Ratings, which said the nation’s decision to suspend payments on its foreign debt has kicked off a sovereign default process, Bloomberg News reported. Fitch Ratings downgraded the nation’s long-term foreign currency to C, one step above default. Earlier, S&P also cut the country’s score to CC, the third-lowest level.

Sri Lanka warned of an unprecedented default and halted payments on foreign debt, an extraordinary step taken to preserve its dwindling dollar stockpile for essential food and fuel imports, Bloomberg News reported. All outstanding payments to bond holders, bilateral creditors and institutional lenders will be suspended until a debt restructure, the finance ministry said in a statement Tuesday. The newly appointed central bank governor, Nandalal Weerasinghe, said in a briefing that authorities are seeking to negotiate with creditors and warning of a possible default.

Exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui is offering to repay the more than $100 million he owes creditors in part by offering up the yacht that drove him to bankruptcy, court papers show, Bloomberg News reported. The businessman’s debt stems from a $30 million loan he got from a fund in 2008, which according to the lender Guo failed to repay. Guo arranged for the yacht to leave U.S. waters sometime after October 2020, putting it out of the reach of debt collectors.

The Indian government on Friday said that it has amended the insolvency laws pertaining to voluntary liquidation to speed up the process, the Times of India reported. The laws on voluntary liquidation are part of the ones aimed at improving ease-of-doing business by allowing a smooth exit for firms. A statement from the government said that the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (Voluntary Liquidation Process) (Amendment) Regulations, 2022 were notified on April 5, 2022. The law was introduced to provide a mechanism for voluntary liquidation of a solvent corporate person.

Luckin Coffee Inc., said on Monday that it had emerged from bankruptcy proceedings, two years after an accounting fraud derailed the coffee chain's business, Reuters reported. Founded in 2017, Xiamen-based Luckin had positioned itself as a homegrown challenger to U.S. coffee giant Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O), but the much-hyped company almost collapsed in 2020 after findings that about 2.2 billion yuan ($337.31 million) in 2019 sales was fabricated.