The Presbyterian Church of Queensland, which runs aged care operator PresCare, has been placed in receivership after the sale of three properties fell short, leaving it unable to pay debts owed to a creditor, the Australian Financial Review reported. PCQ was unable to meet the terms of a contract with its partner, real estate investment trust Catalyst Health, triggering the insolvency. Catalyst and PresCare had entered into several sale and lease back deals in recent years.

The global surge in commodities prices has now made Japan's decades-old fight against its "deflationary mindset" even more critical as businesses in the world's third-largest economy's struggle to break even, Reuters reported. Japanese firms' aversion to passing on higher prices has made it hard to raise wages for fear of being saddled with high fixed costs, which in turn feeds deflationary pressures.

Malaysia today said the U.S. Department of Justice has returned 1.9 billion ringgit ($460.22 million) of funds recovered from assets related to sovereign fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), Reuters reported. Malaysian and U.S. investigators say that at least $4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB between 2009 and 2014, in a wide-ranging scandal that has implicated high-level officials, banks and financial institutions around the world. The United States has been returning funds it has recovered from seized assets that were allegedly bought with stolen 1MDB money.

Hong Kong sold a rare land parcel in the Causeway Bay area for a higher-than-expected price, a sign of recovery for the city’s commercial real estate market, Bloomberg News reported. The government sold the site to Hysan Development Co. and Chinachem Group for HK$19.8 billion ($2.5 billion) in a public tender, according to a statement. That exceeds a previous valuation of about HK$15 billion by Midland IC&I Ltd., reflecting optimism from developers that Hong Kong’s office and retail markets will rebound.

Australia unveiled a big-spending budget that aims to run the economy red hot, joining the U.S. and Europe with a fiscal-monetary tandem that seeks to drive unemployment down to levels rarely seen in the past 50 years, Bloomberg News reported. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s 2021-2022 fiscal blueprint aligns both economic orthodoxy with the political needs of a government facing an election in the next year.

China’s factory-gate prices jumped by the most in 3½ years in April, driven by surging commodities prices, raising concerns that inflationary pressures could spread globally, the Wall Street Journal reported. The country’s consumer-price index, a measure of inflation that tracks prices for a basket of goods and services, rose 0.9% in April from a year earlier, reaching a seven-month high. The producer-price index, a gauge of factory-gate prices, rose 6.8% last month, the fastest pace since October 2017, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday.

Myanmar's foreign exchange hit a record low of 1,660 kyat on the dollar on Monday, according to state media. Despite continuous efforts by the junta, the currency has lost 20% of its value since a military coup on Feb. 1, Nikkei Asia reported. The previous record low was 1,650 kyat on the dollar in September 2018 when the China-U.S. trade war led to a fall in the value of the yuan. That also brought down the kyat. The drop results from growing distrust in the national currency that has prompted many to turn to money changers in search of hard currencies.

The dedicated bankruptcy court has admitted the insolvency petition against Cox & Kings Financial Services Limited (CKFSL) and appointed Pardeep Kumar Sethi as interim resolution professional (IRP) for the company, the Economic Times of India reported. YES Bank had approached the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) after the company defaulted on its dues of over Rs 445 crore.

Malaysia’s now-defunct 1MDB state fund is suing units of Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan and Coutts & Co. to recover billions in alleged losses from a corruption scandal at the fund, court documents seen by Reuters showed. 1MDB is claiming $1.11 billion from Deutsche Bank (Malaysia) Bhd, $800 million from J.P. Morgan (Switzerland) Ltd and $1.03 billion from a Swiss-based Coutts unit, and interest payments from all of them, according to the lawsuit.

Nomura Holdings Inc. announced business partnerships at home, Australia and New Zealand as Japan’s biggest brokerage seeks to move past a $2.9 billion hit from the implosion of Archegos Capital Management, Bloomberg News reported. Nomura signed an agreement with three regional Japanese banks to set up a joint venture to provide remote financial consulting services. It also struck up an alliance with investment bank Jarden Securities Ltd. to provide services such as stock and bond underwriting for clients in Australia and New Zealand, it said in separate statements on Monday.