Tata Sons Pvt. was selected as the winning bidder for India’s flag carrier, ending decades of attempts to privatize a money-losing and debt-laden airline, and potentially ending years of taxpayer-bailouts that’s kept the company alive, Bloomberg News reported. Tata Sons, which originally launched Air India Ltd. with a namesake branding in 1932, bid 180 billion rupees ($2.4 billion) as an enterprise value for Air India, Tuhin Kanta Pandey, the top bureaucrat at India’s Department of Investment and Public Asset Management, said at a briefing Friday.

China Evergrande Group offshore bondholders are concerned that it is close to defaulting on debt payments and want more information and transparency from the cash-strapped property developer, their advisers said, Reuters reported. Evergrande, which could trigger one of China's largest defaults as it wrestles with debts of more than $300 billion and whose troubles have already sent shockwaves across global markets, missed payments on dollar bonds, worth a combined $131 million, that were due on Sept. 23 and Sept. 29.

Creditors have yet to receive repayment of a dollar bond they say is guaranteed by China Evergrande Group and one of its units, in what could be the firm’s first major miss on maturing notes since regulators urged the developer to avoid a near-term default, Bloomberg News reported. Some investors hadn’t received the principal payment for a note that matured Oct. 3 as of Thursday in Hong Kong, according to people with knowledge of the situation who asked not to be named discussing private matters. As Oct. 3 was a Sunday, the effective due date was Monday.

Vietnam's slow reopening this past week was bittersweet for Stanley Furniture, which had been in COVID lockdown along with thousands of other manufacturers, from Netflix supplier ASRock to shoe giant Pou Chen. On the one hand, Stanley employees were glad to go back to making desks and drawers. On the other, their goods are stuck in storage because global shipping costs skyrocketed, Nikkei Asia reported. That is just one of many risks hanging over the fragile supply chain even after Ho Chi Minh City and surrounding provinces on Friday lifted a bruising pandemic shutdown.

SREI Group promoters on Wednesday moved the Bombay High Court challenging Reserve Bank of India’s decision to supersede the board of two group companies, in preparation for sending them to bankruptcy courts, the Economic Times of India reported. Srei group promoters are seeking stay on any insolvency proceedings at group companies Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd and Srei Equipment Finance Ltd, whose board the regulator sacked and appointed an administrator. The promoters are also seeking stay on the appointment of the administrator.

Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said the nation’s incoming government will seek a new type of capitalism that helps tackle wealth inequality, but on questions around the sales tax, debt and the central bank he sounded like the official he replaced a day earlier, Bloomberg News reported. “I’ll be seeking to bring about a new form of capitalism that creates a virtuous cycle of growth and wider wealth distribution,” Suzuki said at his inaugural press conference Tuesday, a day after succeeding long-serving finance chief Taro Aso.

Growing worries about defaults at Chinese property developers triggered a rout in their shares and bonds on Tuesday with fresh credit rating downgrades and uncertainty about the fate of cash-strapped China Evergrande Group sapping investor sentiment, Reuters reported. Once China's top-selling developer, Evergrande is facing one of the country's largest-ever debt restructurings as it wrestles with more than $300 billion in liabilities, including nearly $20 billion in offshore debt.

Australia’s central bank kept its monetary settings unchanged, betting there’s enough stimulus to foster an economic recovery ahead of a gradual reopening of Sydney and Melbourne as vaccination rates climb, Bloomberg News reported. Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe kept the cash rate at 0.1% -- as expected -- at Tuesday’s meeting. Lowe cut weekly bond purchases to A$4 billion ($2.9 billion) last month, while pushing out their next review to mid-February to help cushion the economic impact of lockdowns along the nation’s east coast.

As China Evergrande Group edges closer to a massive restructuring, Beijing has stepped up efforts to limit the fallout, signaling it’s willing to prop up healthy developers, homeowners and the real estate market at the expense of global bondholders, Bloomberg News reported. In the last week alone, Chinese authorities have dispatched top financial regulators to nudge the country’s massive banks to ease credit for homebuyers and support the property sector. They also bought out part of Evergrande’s stake in a struggling bank to limit contagion.

Chinese property developer Fantasia Holdings Group Co Ltd missed a debt payment deadline on Monday in the latest sign that distress is spreading from embattled China Evergrande and through the real estate sector, Reuters reported. Fantasia said that $206 million was due on Oct. 4 and that it did not pay, in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange. The company had said as recently as Sept. 20 that it had "sufficient working capital and no liquidity issue." With a market value of $415 million, Fantasia is a minnow.