A sale of Australia's biggest airport moved closer on Monday as an infrastructure investor group won permission to conduct due diligence on Sydney Airport Holdings Pt Ltd, after sweetening its takeover offer to A$23.6 billion ($17.4 billion), Reuters reported. The move sent the airport's shares up 5%, with analysts saying a rival bid appeared unlikely given the scale of the funding needed and foreign ownership rules that mean the airport must remain 51% Australian owned.

China Evergrande Group is facing mounting protests by homebuyers, retail investors and even its own employees, raising the stakes for authorities in Beijing as they try to prevent the property giant’s debt crisis from sparking social unrest, Bloomberg News reported. Police descended on Evergrande’s Shenzhen headquarters late Monday after dozens of people gathered to demand repayments on overdue wealth management products. Protesters numbered in the hundreds on Sunday, Caixin reported.

Japan Airlines Co. plans to raise about 300 billion yen ($2.7 billion) via subordinated bonds and loans to shore up its capital in case the coronavirus pandemic hurts travel demand longer than it expects, Bloomberg News reported. The Tokyo-based carrier said it secured around 200 billion yen in loans from four Japanese banks and plans to sell 100 billion yen of bonds. The financing is partly a “preventive measure” to counter the long-term business impact of Covid-19, general manager of finance Yuichiro Kito told reporters.

Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. won a four-year battle for control of money from an arbitration award that it says it needs to repay lenders, Bloomberg News reported. A two-judge panel of the Indian Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the 2017 arbitration award in favor of the Anil Ambani’s unit. The arbitration tribunal award is worth over 46.6 billion rupees ($632 million) including interest, according to Reliance Infrastructure’s annual report. Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. won a four-year battle for control of money from an arbitration award that it says it needs to repay lenders.

Turkish lenders are resisting demands from the banking regulator to curb growth in consumer credit, which authorities blame for fueling inflation and the current-account deficit, Bloomberg News reported. The executives of top Turkish banks faced off against Mehmet Ali Akben, head of the banking regulator, last Thursday, according to the minutes of their meeting, a copy of which was seen by Bloomberg.

Chinese regulators are probing Haitong Securities over allegations of misconduct in the brokerage house's investment banking business, dealing another blow to the scandal-plagued company amid tightening scrutiny of financial intermediaries, Nikkei Asia reported. Haitong received a notice from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) disclosing the probe, which targets the broker's role in the financial reporting fraud case of Aurora Optoelectronics, the company said Wednesday in a filing.

The pandemic and a shortage of members in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has slowed insolvency resolution by over 45% with cases taking nearly 593 days during the June quarter, latest data showed, the Times of India reported. As of March-end, it took 408 days from the insolvency commencement date to the approval of the resolution. A thrust of the law was to provide for a time-bound resolution — ideally within 180 days, which could be extended by another 90 days.

Japan's economy grew an annualised clip of 1.9% in the second quarter, better than the initial estimate of a 1.3% gain, revised government data showed, confirming a gradual recovery from the COVID-induced slump, Reuters reported. The revised figure for gross domestic product (GDP) released by the Cabinet Office on Wednesday compared with economists' median forecast for a 1.6% annualised growth in a Reuters poll. On a quarter-on-quarter basis GDP expanded 0.5% in the April-June quarter, also better than the initial reading of 0.3% and compared with a median forecast for a 0.4% rise.

Eric Teng was preparing to welcome his restaurants’ first dine-in customers in weeks on Wednesday when the Philippine government suddenly backtracked on its decision to ease virus curbs, Bloomberg News reported. “It’s unacceptable, but we have to live by these overnight declarations,” said Teng, who runs a group of restaurants including Mango Tree and Cocina Peruvia in Manila. “That’s a live-or-die statement for us.

U.S. payments giant PayPal Holdings Inc. said it would acquire Japanese "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) firm Paidy in a $2.7 billion largely cash deal, taking another step to claim the top spot in an industry experiencing a pandemic-led boom, Reuters reported. The deal tracks rival Square Inc.'s agreement last month to buy Australian BNPL success story Afterpay Ltdfor $29 billion, which experts said was likely the beginning of a consolidation in the sector.