The downgrade of China’s debt by Moody’s Investors Service may push Chinese companies to borrow even more money from domestic banks as overseas debt becomes more expensive, increasing risks for the nation’s finance industry, Bloomberg News reported. With growing indebtedness at home, compounded by a slowing economy, there’s a risk of a “negative feedback loop,” said Khoon Goh, head of Asia research for Australia & New Zealand Banking Group who sees state-owned enterprises and property developers feeling the biggest impact.

The founder of LeEco, a Chinese Netflix-to-Tesla-like conglomerate, has stepped down as the CEO of the group's main listed unit, as the company begins to streamline and cut debt after rapid expansion led to a cash crunch, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Jia Yueting, who will remain as chairman and CEO of LeEco, envisions the group maintaining its separate unlisted automotive unit but rolling all other areas of business into Leshi Internet Information & Technology Corp Beijing, according to a transcript of his remarks to journalists on Sunday.

For global investors and, indeed commentators, China remains a fascinating subject and one that carries a health warning, the Financial Times reported. Nearly a third of fund managers say the recent tightening of credit by authorities in Beijing, who are taking aim at the shadow banking sector, is now the biggest tail risk for markets, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey released this week. Not since January of 2016 has China ranked above the threat of a eurozone break-up as the biggest worry for investors.

The yield on Chinese five-year government bonds hit its highest since 2014 on Friday, as tight liquidity and a regulatory crackdown on leveraged investment caused a rarely seen inversion of the yield curve, the Financial Times reported.

There's growing evidence that China is finally scaling back its epic borrowing binge. That's important for a lot of reasons, not least for reducing risk and avoiding a financial crisis, a Bloomberg View reported. The question is whether the government can sustain the pain. Regulators in Beijing are well aware of the risks that excessive leverage poses, and have tried many times over the years to crack down. Yet they routinely fail to rein in local government officials who get promoted by boosting economic growth, regardless of what systemic risks they may be incurring by binging on debt.

A tightening of leverage, coupled with soaring land costs, looks set to end the home price windfall that China's developers have enjoyed this year.Prices of new dwellings, excluding government-subsidized housing, gained in March in 62 of the 70 cities tracked by the government, compared with 56 in February, the National Bureau of Statistics said last month. On Monday, Longfor Properties Co.

A Chinese regulator announced on Friday that it had taken disciplinary measures against the Anbang Insurance Group, a financial behemoth that has tried to invest tens of billions of dollars overseas, for the improper sale of two investment products, the International New York Times reported. The moves by the China Insurance Regulatory Commission come against a backdrop of broader worries about the country’s financial system, in addition to ones about the insurance industry.

The World Bank has warned that Chinese local governments remain addicted to off-budget borrowing, despite Beijing’s efforts to impose fiscal discipline on localities and curb ballooning debt, the Financial Times reported. Runaway growth of local government debt is widely seen as a huge risk for China’s economy and financial system. Provinces, cities and counties borrowed heavily to spend on infrastructure to keep economic growth humming after the 2008 financial crisis.

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., the world’s largest lender by assets, reported its strongest quarterly profit growth in two years as soured credit and lending margins stabilized amid an uptick in the economy, Bloomberg News reported. Net income rose 1.4 percent to 75.79 billion yuan ($11 billion) in the three months ended March 31 from 74.76 billion yuan a year earlier, the Beijing-based lender said in an exchange filing on Friday. Rival lender Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. separately reported a 1.9 percent profit increase for the period.

Investors are becoming more discerning when it comes to the origin of Chinese debt, Bloomberg News reported. China saw its worst start to a year on record for corporate defaults, with companies headquartered in two eastern provinces -- Liaoning and Shandong -- responsible for the lion’s share. Money managers are taking notice, with a run of messy, high-profile company scandals helping sour sentiment toward certain regions. Beijing’s de-leveraging drive, which has been ramped up this month and has boosted borrowing costs, is also a factor.