More Chinese companies are defaulting on private bonds this year as the slowing economy weighs on weaker companies and firms seek to repay publicly traded debt first, Bloomberg News reported. The nation’s issuers have missed repayments on a record 31.8 billion yuan ($4.4 billion) of private bonds this year through August, compared with 26.7 billion yuan for all of 2017 and 2018 combined, according to data by China Chengxin International Credit Rating Co., one of China’s biggest rating firms.

HNA Group Co.’s cash pile shrank 20 times faster than its debts, indicating that pressure is building for one of China’s most indebted conglomerates to speed up asset sales, Bloomberg News reported. Cash, equivalents and short-term investments as of the end of June tumbled 61% from a year earlier, according to data derived from from the Hainan-based Chinese group’s interim report released on Friday. By comparison, total debt fell 3%.

Some developers may not be admitting as much but there are increasing signs that times are tough in real estate in China. All three of the country’s biggest residential property firms reported a drop in the number of full-time employees in their first-half results, the first simultaneous downsizing since 2015, Bloomberg calculations show, Bloomberg News reported. Real estate companies in the world’s most-populous nation are facing a triple whammy of increased home-buying curbs, a more stringent credit environment and a slowing economy.

China’s young leasing market offers plenty of opportunity for domestic and foreign lessors but also plenty of risk, reflected in the growing number of lawsuits over missed payments from cash-strapped local governments, the Financial Times reported.

Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney said global growth prospects are flagging due to a trade war pursued by Washington, creating new challenges for economic policy makers, The Wall Street Journal reported. “The pickup that we’ve been expecting in global growth has not transpired,” Mr. Carney said in an interview Friday on the sidelines of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual symposium in the Grand Teton National Park. “When we trace it, it’s not because of Fed policy. It’s not because of global financial conditions.

Qinghai Provincial Investment Group Co. has again missed a coupon payment on a dollar bond, a sign that a local government-led debt restructuring has yet to ease finances at the Chinese state-backed aluminum producer, Bloomberg News reported. The company has yet to wire funds to pay a coupon that came due Thursday on a $300 million 2020 note, according to a person familiar with the matter. It is in talks with financial institutions for funds to make a delayed payment, said the person who is not authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified.

The government of the Chinese city of Tianjin, the only shareholder of bankrupt Bohai Steel Group Ltd, is demanding that Bohai’s creditors and strategic investor implement a bankruptcy restructuring plan by the end of September, two creditor sources with direct knowledge of the matter said, Reuters reported. Bohai Steel, a former Fortune Global 500 company that was founded by the Tianjin municipal government in 2010 by merging four local steelmakers, collapsed in 2016 with more than 200 billion yuan ($28.4 billion) in unpaid debt, the biggest bankruptcy restructuring in China’s history.

HNA Group Co. repaid a dollar-denominated bond on Monday amid a report China’s provincial government offered to help the debt-laden conglomerate meet payments to its offshore creditors, Bloomberg News reported. HNA Group International, a unit of HNA Group, repaid a $300 million bond due Aug. 18, a company spokesperson told Bloomberg, saying “we remain committed to meeting our financial obligations.” REDD reported last week that the Hainan government would provide 1 billion yuan ($142 million) to HNA Group to help it repay that bond.

China’s central bank on Saturday unveiled a long-awaited reform to its interest-rate mechanism, a move aimed at reducing financing costs for businesses struggling with a cooling economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The People’s Bank of China said in a statement Saturday that it would replace existing benchmark interest rates with the Loan Prime Rate, which is based on real-world bank lending prices, as a reference for banks in pricing new loans.

As China moves toward a more market-based approach to determining the cost of money in its economy, one metric suggests corporate debt is going in the opposite direction, Bloomberg News reported. Some 17% of company bonds in the first half were sold at yields at least 50 basis points below rates in the secondary market, according to data from China Chengxin International Credit Rating Co. That’s a jump from 9.9% in the second half of 2018. Globally, only the most in-demand issuers can raise funds in line with where their existing debt is trading; almost everyone pays a premium.