China

China's Sinosteel will delay the payment of interest to its bondholders due on Tuesday, it said, after the state-owned company extended the date investors can start redeeming its bonds by a month. The company made the announcement in a statement posted on the website of one of the country's main bond clearing houses. On Monday, the steel trader extended a put option date for investors by a month, amid reports the debt-laden firm had asked investors to hold off seeking redemptions due to liquidity problems.

China’s bungled stock market bailout was a significant setback to its decades-long efforts to build a modern financial system, the International New York Times reported. Its currency devaluation shocked global investors and altered the policy calculus at central banks from Hanoi to Washington. A highly anticipated package of overhauls to sprawling state-owned companies was a crushing rebuke to hopes that China would move to privatize such businesses. Instead of reducing their stakes, the Communist Party said it would increase its control over such companies.

Lacking only façade work, wiring and paint, the red-brick duplexes lining a remote street in the Chinese port city of Qingdao could, if required, hit the market in a matter of days. That presents a problem for China and the world. Marketed as villas, the duplexes in the sprawling Shimao Noble Town aren’t quite complete and don’t have permits for sale. That makes them invisible to both national and local statisticians trying to get a handle on the size of China’s massive glut of empty and unfinished homes.

China Huarong Asset Management, the largest manager of distressed debt in China, is looking to raise up to $2.5 billion in an initial public offering in Hong Kong this month, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. The bank is offering 5.77 billion shares at 3.03 to 3.39 Hong Kong dollars, or 39 cents to 44 cents, a share, according to people with direct knowledge of the offering terms. That means it could raise $2.3 billion to $2.5 billion. It has secured commitments worth $1.6 billion from 10 “cornerstone” investors, or large institutional buyers.

Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd.’s dollar bonds headed for their best rally in six months on speculation a restructuring agreement with an onshore lender will allow the beleaguered Chinese developer to focus on resolving a stalemate with offshore creditors. The Shenzen-based real estate group’s Shanghai unit has returned to normal operations after reaching a settlement with Bank of China Ltd., spokeswoman Zhou Ting said in an e-mail Tuesday, declining to elaborate on the amount of debt involved.

China’s main task is to restructure its economy rather than worrying about the recent slump in stock prices, a German finance ministry official said Thursday, calling on the Asian giant to focus on strengthening domestic demand, The Wall Street Journal reported. “The recent discussions about stock-market turbulences are rather a side issue,” said the official during a briefing on next week’s meeting of the International Monetary Fund and Group of 20 nations in Lima, Peru.

China’s stock market crash and economic slowdown appear to be keeping globe-trotting Chinese tourists closer to home, potentially hurting the global travel industry and the luxury goods companies that have thrived on free-spending tour groups, The Wall Street Journal reported. Growth in international travel bookings from China fell in August for the first time since at least 2010 and continued to decline through September, despite the start of a big holiday week, according to ForwardKeys, a Spain-based travel intelligence company that analyzes Chinese airline booking data.

A brokerage report Friday saying the parent of China National Erzhong Group Co. won’t pay bond interest due today is prompting speculation over whether the smelting equipment maker will become China’s second state-owned company to default on onshore bonds, Bloomberg News reported. Analysts from China International Capital Corp. said the firm’s controlling shareholder China National Machinery Industry Corp.

When Mark L. Hart III, a hedge fund investor based in Texas, makes an investment bet, he does it in the style of his home state: big time, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Since 2007, his winners have included high-risk, high-return wagers that the United States housing market would collapse and that Greece would go bankrupt. But Mr. Hart’s most audacious gamble to date may well be the one he is making on China.

Chinese bondholders facing the prospect of a debt default by a state-owned enterprise will receive a bailout, the company said on Tuesday, a sign that Beijing remains unwilling to impose market discipline on lossmaking state groups, the Financial Times reported. China National Erzhong Group, a unit of one of the elite club of 112 big enterprises directly owned by the central government, employed a workforce of more than 13,000 in 2012, when it had assets of Rmb25bn ($3.9bn).