Debt-laden Chinese developer Kaisa Group Holding is close to finalising a deal with its onshore creditors, a senior advisor said, days after the company said its talks with offshore creditors were also progressing, Reuters reported. Kaisa became the first Chinese property developer to default on its offshore debt payments. The company which owes almost $11 billion, of which $2.5 billion is due to overseas creditors, is in the midst of debt restructuring talks which have helped support its bonds.

He has been called China’s Carl Icahn. But the billionaire owner of one of the country’s most successful investment firms is now the latest suspect in the broadening crackdown on corruption in the financial industry, the International New York Times reported. The fund manager, Xu Xiang, nicknamed Big Xu, was arrested in dramatic Hollywood fashion, more worthy of a spy movie than a financier. As the police closed in, the highway patrol sealed the 22-mile Hangzhou Bay Bridge for more than 30 minutes and eventually apprehended Mr. Xu near the exit, according to state media.

Activity in China's manufacturing sector unexpectedly shrank for a third straight month in October, an official survey showed on Sunday, fuelling fears that the economy may be cooling further in the fourth quarter despite a raft of stimulus measures, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The official Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) was at 49.8 in October, the same pace as in previous month and lagging market expectations of 50.0. A reading over 50 points suggests an expansion in activity while one below that level points to an contraction on a monthly basis.

The wealth-management products that banks sell at branches across China are often considered as safe as deposits by customers. There are growing reasons to question that faith, Bloomberg News reported. The ability of Chinese lenders’ $2.4 trillion of WMPs to generate the returns they promise is being undermined as monetary easing has pushed corporate bond yields to a five-year low.

China’s moves to ease mortgage restrictions and cut interest rates are bearing fruit in the nation’s smaller cities, where home prices have staged a recovery. Now comes the bigger challenge: Clearing a supply glut to spur investment by developers, Bloomberg News reported. Lower borrowing costs are helping a residential market recovery spread from the economic hubs such as Shanghai and Shenzhen to smaller and less-prosperous cities. New-home prices rose in September from August in more than half of the 70 major cities monitored by the government for the first time in 17 months.

In most respects, double-digit growth is a relic of the past for China. In the third quarter the economy grew by just 6.9% year-on-year according to official data, and probably by a percentage point or two less in reality. Yet bank loans increased by 15.4% in the third quarter compared with the same period in 2014, The Economist reported. Having released a torrent of credit to buoy the economy during the financial crisis, China was supposed to have started deleveraging by now.

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.