Oil and gas explorer Far Ltd said on Thursday it received a A$209.6 million ($159.15 mln) all-cash takeover proposal from private investment firm Remus Horizons PCC Ltd, Reuters reported. The offer values Far at 2.1 Australian cents per share, representing a premium of 90.9% to the company’s shares last closing price of 1.1 Australian cents. Cash-strapped Far has struggled due to the coronavirus-induced downturn in the oil and gas industry, with the Africa-focused explorer defaulting in June on its contributions to the Sangomar oil project off Senegal’s shore.

China’s banking and insurance regulator said on Thursday it has approved the opening of China Galaxy Asset Management Co., Ltd, the fifth asset management company in the country that will mainly deal with bad loans and toxic assets nationwide, Reuters reported. Chinese banks are braced for rising bad debt in the coming months as policies designed to give borrowers breathing space on loans during the coronavirus crisis expire.

China’s central bank is striking out on its own with signals of tighter monetary policy, widening a divergence with other large economies that will shape global capital and trade flows next year, Bloomberg News reported. With most of the world’s major nations still battling the pandemic and struggling to recover from deep recessions, China’s economy is on track to grow by about 2% this year and more than 8% in 2021.

China has suspended one of its top credit rating agencies after a former executive was accused of taking “massive” bribes, as a growing pile of defaults rattle the country’s $4tn corporate debt market, the Financial Times reported. The China Securities Regulatory Commission announced on Tuesday that it was temporarily freezing the licence of Golden Credit Rating and had forbidden the agency from taking on new business for three months. The move came as Shandong Ruyi, China’s largest textile manufacturer, looked set to default on a second bond in as many days.

More than 60 per cent of the corporate insolvency resolution processes (CIRPs) that achieved closure in July-September 2020 have ended up in liquidation, Business Standard reported. The data by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) shows that 68 of the 112 cases closed during this period went into liquidation. While a significant number of cases had faced liquidation in the previous quarter too, it was still only one-third of the total cases that got closure.

China’s central bank made its biggest ever injection of medium-term funds on Tuesday to shore up liquidity, after recent corporate bond defaults shattered investor confidence and scuppered new issuances, Reuters reported. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement it had issued 950 billion yuan ($145 billion) worth of one-year medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans to financial institutions to keep the “banking system liquidity reasonably ample”. It kept the interest rate unchanged for an eighth straight month at 2.95%.

Lessor BOC Aviation Limited (BOCA) has asked a Malaysian court to dismiss AirAsia X Bhd’s debt restructuring scheme as it rules out a debt-to-equity swap and gives too much power to Airbus as a creditor, an affidavit filed by a top BOCA executive shows, Reuters reported. AirAsia X (AAX), the long-haul unit of budget airline AirAsia Group, has proposed to reconstitute $15.3 billion of debt into a principal amount of 200 million ringgit ($48 million) and have the rest waived.

Automaker Mahindra & Mahindra’s South Korean unit Ssangyong Motor Co has defaulted on loan repayment of about 60 billion won ($55 million), the Indian company said in a statement to the stock exchange on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Of the total payment that was due on Dec. 14, about 30 billion won was owed to Bank of America, 20 billion won to JP Morgan Chase and 10 billion won to BNP Paribas, Mahindra said. Shares of the Indian automaker fell as much as 1.5% on Tuesday to their lowest since Nov. 23, while those of Ssangyong fell up to 7.72%.

Malaysia’s AirAsia X Bhd (AAX) said on Monday it proposed raising 500 million ringgit ($123 million) through a rights issue to existing shareholders and a share subscription for new investors, Reuters reported. The airline, the long haul arm of AirAsia Group, said in a stock exchange filing that it intends to raise up to 300 million ringgit through the rights issue.

China’s central bank is likely to inject cash into the financial system Tuesday, helping lenders with their year-end liquidity needs, Bloomberg News reported. With some 600 billion yuan ($92 billion) of one-year loans maturing in December, the People’s Bank of China is expected to offer as much as 800 billion yuan in funding to banks, according to Huachuang Securities Co. That would be the fifth straight month of net injections via the medium-term lending facility.