China’s Unigroup International Holdings Ltd said Thursday that it was unable to repay a maturing $450 million bond by a Dec. 10 deadline, triggering cross defaults on dollar bonds worth an additional $2 billion, Reuters reported. In a statement on the website of the Hong Kong stock exchange, Unigroup International said neither it nor its guarantor Tsinghua Unigroup International Co Ltd would be able to make the principal or the final interest payment on the maturing bond.

South Korean household borrowing from banks and brokerages grew at record pace in November fueled by retail investors borrowing to buy stocks in a bull market that stands 90% higher than lows struck in March, Reuters reported. Bank lending to households for mortgages, stocks and living expenses in November was up by 13.6 trillion won ($12.54 billion) from October, in another big monthly rise that added to record levels of household debt despite fresh curbs on loans introduced by regulators last month.

A top Chinese chipmaker’s deepening bond crisis is sending a fresh signal that Beijing is willing to let ailing state-linked firms fail in order to instill stronger financial discipline into a recovering economy, Bloomberg News reported. Tsinghua Unigroup Co. said it won’t be able to repay the principal on a $450 million dollar bond due Thursday, which would trigger cross defaults on a further $2 billion of debt. This would be the company’s first dollar bond repayment failure and came after it defaulted on a 1.3 billion yuan ($199 million) local bond last month.

Even as the Committee of Creditor (CoC) is likely to decide within a week on Videocon Industries promoter Venugopal Dhoot's offer of Rs 31,289 crore for withdrawal of insolvency proceedings against 15 of his group companies, the question that will remain in creditors' mind is how he would fund this offer, Business Today reported. In an interaction with Business Today, Venugopal Dhoot says that they plan to raise the money from monetisation of assets, affordable housing, consumer electronics and home appliances business.

Investors are cooling on debt from riskier Chinese companies after missed payments by state-backed firms have cast doubt on the reliability of government support, The Wall Street Journal reported. The wariness has helped push new borrowing costs for these businesses to their highest levels in nearly two years, marring what has been a banner year for debt issuance. In November, corporations with below triple-A credit ratings paid an average 5.89% coupon for stock-exchange listed debt, according to Wind, the highest since January 2019. In contrast, triple-A coupon rates fell to 4.09%.

Virgin Australia said on Wednesday it had restructured its order for Boeing Co 737 MAX planes, reducing the number on order to 25 from 48 and delaying the first deliveries by two years to mid-2023, Reuters reported. Australia’s second-biggest airline, now owned by U.S. private equity group Bain Capital, said in a statement it would take 25 of the largest variant, the 737 MAX 10, but not the 23 smaller 737 MAX 8s it had ordered previously. Bain’s purchase of Virgin closed last month, allowing the airline to exit from voluntary administration, Australia’s closest equivalent to U.S.

Tianqi Lithium Corp. plans to sell a minority stake in the world’s biggest lithium mine, giving the producer access to the cash it needs to repay the major loan behind its ballooning financial troubles, Bloomberg News reported. Australian miner IGO Ltd. will pay $1.4 billion in cash for a 49% stake in Tianqi Lithium Energy Australia Pty, the majority shareholder in the Greenbushes mine in the country’s west, according to a statement to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

Relations between the United States and China promise to be fraught even under President-elect Joe Biden’s administration, Bloomberg News reported in a commentary. There’s one area where the two rivals can and should cooperate immediately, however: to head off a looming debt crisis that threatens to hurl millions into poverty across Africa, Latin America and Asia. When many of the world’s poorest countries last found themselves unable to service their debts 25 years ago, the U.S. led a global effort — the 1996 Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative — to forgive much of that debt.

China is bucking the global trend of greater economic stimulus amid the coronavirus, preferring instead to refocus on controlling its record debt burden, Bloomberg News reported. Policy makers are allowing for tighter liquidity in the financial system, a signal that Beijing wants to stabilize the level of debt in the economy. Though not as aggressive as previous deleveraging drives, the shift is pushing up market rates: government-bond yields trade near an 18-month high and interbank borrowing costs last month jumped to the highest since January.

Bankrupt carrier Jet Airways India Ltd., once the nation’s biggest airline by market value, is planning to restart operations as a full-service carrier by the summer of 2021, its new owners announced, Bloomberg News reported. A consortium led by Dubai-based entrepreneur Murari Lal Jalan and Kalrock Capital has set a revival plan for Jet Airways, which includes a dedicated freighter service and hubs in small Indian cities beyond Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.