Monthly sales of new energy vehicles in China fell in July for the first time in over two years, amid a yearlong slowdown in the world’s largest autos market, the Financial Times reported. Sales of NEVs, a category that includes both hybrid and fully electrified cars, declined by 4.7 per cent year-on-year in July to 80,000 vehicles, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said on Monday.

Thomas Cook, the UK tour operator, lost nearly a fifth of its market value after it confirmed it was seeking a further £150m on top of the £750m already secured as part of a rescue deal with its debtholders, the Financial Times reported. The Financial Times revealed on Friday that Thomas Cook was in talks with bondholders to secure the additional capital, as part of a bailout involving its largest shareholder, the Chinese conglomerate Fosun, and its lending banks.

China’s factory gate prices shrank for the first time in three years in July, stoking deflation worries and adding pressure on Beijing to deliver more stimulus as the economy sputters amid an intensifying trade war with the United States. With demand slowing at home and abroad, Chinese manufacturers are having to cut prices to keep market share, depressing profit margins and discouraging the fresh investment needed to get the economy back on its feet, Reuters reported. Falling prices for crude oil, iron ore and other raw materials are also playing a part.

China’s legions of regional banks are feeling the strain. The country’s two-year crackdown on risky financing and the trade war with the U.S. have slowed economic growth, triggering debt defaults that are exposing them as the weakest link in the credit chain, Bloomberg News reported. Several lenders have fallen into deep trouble this year, with others -- perhaps many -- expected to follow. What’s different is that China seems to have thrown out the old playbook of injecting state funds into struggling lenders to keep them alive.

New bank lending in China likely slowed in July, a Reuters poll showed, reinforcing expectations that policymakers will need to announce more support measures in coming months to stabilize the cooling economy as U.S. trade pressure builds, Reuters reported. The rapidly worsening trade dispute, rising borrowing costs, and this week’s sudden drop in the yuan have fanned worries that the world’s second-largest economy could face a sharper slowdown. But policymakers are also increasingly worried about rising debt and financial risks, particularly in the property market.

Beijing’s decision to let the renminbi fall below the symbolic level of 7 to the dollar was a political choice — but it would not be in China’s economic interests to “weaponise” its currency, economists say, the Financial Times reported. Monday’s move to increase the renminbi’s trading band came as a retaliation against the latest US threat of fresh tariffs. And although China’s central bank took steps to stabilise the currency on Tuesday, investors worry that the authorities could seek to put pressure on Washington by allowing a bigger devaluation.

Pessimism among global businesses has risen sharply in the third quarter of the year as US-China trade tensions, the slowing Eurozone economy, and the rising chances of a no-deal Brexit spook firms, City A.M. reported. The quarterly global risk survey from Oxford Economics, released today, showed that 19 per cent of companies think a deterioration in the global economy is highly likely, compared to seven per cent in the second quarter.

The biggest slide in China’s yuan since 2015 threatens to revive concerns about the capital flight back then that helped spur the country to spend $1 trillion of its reserves. For all its perceived success in tightening regulations and strengthening scrutiny of funds moving abroad, the trauma of that period poses a big reason to avoid any continuous depreciation, Bloomberg News reported. An even more-important financial consideration could be the stockpile of Chinese dollar debt, which has more than doubled since the end of 2015 to $729.8 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Stock investors have never been so downbeat on the world’s biggest banks. China’s “big four” state-owned lenders, which together control more than $14 trillion of assets, have tumbled to record-low valuations amid mounting concern that Beijing will encourage them to bail out smaller peers, Bloomberg News reported. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., the world’s largest lender by assets, lost $11 billion of market value last week after injecting capital into a troubled regional bank as part of a government-orchestrated rescue.

China onshore corporate bond defaults reached at least 14.4 billion yuan ($2.1 billion) from 14 notes in July, the highest level since the March peak, Bloomberg News reported. This brings the total year-to-date defaults to 70.9 billion yuan from 89 bonds. Real estate sector with 10.2b yuan defaults tops year-to-date default list, followed by wholesale (9.5b yuan) and retail sales sector (7.9b yuan). Investment companies topped last month’s defaults, accounting for 45% of monthly total amount. Jiangsu, Anhui provinces and Shanghai City were among the top 3 default locations.