China

Asian stocks extended a global rally, with a weaker yen helping Japan’s Nikkei close up 0.7%. Benchmarks in Hong Kong, South Korea, Indonesia and Singapore also rose, The Wall Street Journal reported. However, indexes in mainland China were little changed, after large gains Monday helped temper a recent rout. China’s developers have enjoyed years of robust growth, expanding aggressively to take advantage of cheap debt and a housing boom.

China Huarong Asset Management Co., the state-owned bad-debt manager whose former chairman has been embroiled in a graft probe, plans to restructure its overseas operations in a bid to cut costs, people with knowledge of the matter said, Bloomberg News reported. The company is targeting reductions of more than 50 percent in staff-related costs at its businesses in Hong Kong and other markets outside China, according to two of the people. Options being discussed involve cutting jobs and pay, said one of the people, who asked to remain anonymous discussing confidential information.

Shanghai-listed energy and petrochemical group Wintime Energy defaulted on a bond payment on Thursday, putting $3.9bn in oustanding bonds at risk, the Financial Times reported. Chinese bond defaults have accelerated this year, leading to widening credit spreads in both the onshore renminbi and offshore US dollar bond markets.  Wintime missed payment on an Rmb1.5bn one-year commercial paper that matured on Thursday, according to Shanghai Clearing House. Wintime has the equivalent of $3.9bn in bonds outstanding, according to Thomson Reuters data.

China Ocean Industry, the parent group of Jiangxi Shipbuilding, has entered into a debt restructuring agreement with Zhejiang Ouhua Shipbuilding, Asia Shipping Media reported. Under the agreement, China Ocean Industry will transfer 40% equity shares in its fully owned subsidiary China Ocean Hong Kong to Zhejiang Ouhua Shipbuilding to offset outstanding debt of RMB200m ($30m) owed by Jiangxi Shipbuilding to Zhejiang Ouhua. China Ocean Industry believes the deal will bring new cooperation opportunities to revive business of Jiangxi Shipbuilding.

Lying just to the south of Shanghai, Zhejiang province is the historical centre of Chinese private enterprise.

Pakistan has asked China to keep lending it money to avert a foreign currency crisis, warning that Beijing’s planned $60bn investment in the south Asian country was at risk if it failed to do so, the Financial Times reported. Pakistan borrowed $4bn from China in the year ending June 2018, according to government officials, and wants to keep the money flowing to avoid having to ask the IMF for a bailout.

For HNA Group Co. leader Chen Feng, the sudden death of his No. 2 raises the pressure for the Chinese tycoon to step up his involvement in fixing the finances of a group saddled with more than $90 billion in debt, Bloomberg News reported. The late Wang Jian, the junior of HNA’s two chairmen, died while sightseeing in a French village this week at a time the group was undertaking an urgent restructuring that’s already involved more than $16 billion in asset sales this year.

China is zooming to a record year of corporate-bond defaults, with the 2018 total already more than three-quarters of the previous high even before an expected economic slowdown bites, Bloomberg News reported. Chinese companies have reneged on about 16.5 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) of public bond payments so far this year, compared with the high of 20.7 billion yuan seen in all of 2016, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Strains are set to get worse if the trends of credit-rating companies are anything to go by -- agencies including Dagong Global Rating Co.

Global worries over trade wars, central bank rate hikes and geopolitical instability have hammered emerging-market debt in recent months. The fact is, over the past decade, many developing and low-income countries have simply borrowed too much, a Bloomberg View reported. They borrowed from the markets, from banks and from other countries. In particular, they borrowed from China, which has averaged more than $100 billion in annual financing commitments since 2010. Those bills are now coming due.

China’s manufacturing growth inched lower in June, according to an independent gauge, the Financial Times reported. The Caixin-Markit China manufacturing purchasing managers’ index came in at 51 last month, still above the 50-point mark delineating growth from contraction but down 0.1 points from May’s level. The gauge, which concentrates on smaller and private companies, stood a half a point below its official counterpart, which is focused on larger and state-owned manufacturers and dropped 0.4 points in June.