China

China has for the first time issued a notice prohibiting domestic brokerages and their overseas units from taking on new mainland clients for offshore trading, according to an official document seen by Reuters and confirmed by four sources. New investments by existing mainland clients are also to be "strictly monitored" to prevent investors from bypassing China's foreign exchange controls, said the notice.

China reached a tentative debt agreement with Sri Lanka, front-running separate talks the International Monetary Fund and other creditors are holding with the South Asian nation and catching them by surprise, Bloomberg News reported. The deal between Export-Import Bank of China and Sri Lanka was reached late last month, China’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday, without providing details of the pact. The IMF, Paris Club members including Japan, and other lenders like India are expected to hold talks this week in Morocco on a debt restructuring plan.

As more Chinese property developers move towards restructuring billions of dollars of debt, their offshore creditors are expected to face another setback - the prospects of revamp terms being tightened due to a worsening outlook for the county's real estate sector, Reuters reported. So far, developers accounting for 40% of Chinese home sales have defaulted on their debt obligations since 2021, according to JPMorgan. Those defaulted companies, mostly private, have issued around $110 billion worth of high-yield offshore bonds.

Chinese electric vehicle startup WM Motor has filed for bankruptcy, marking the demise of a promising standout among China's EV makers as price competition in the world's largest auto market heats up, Reuters reported. A court in Shanghai is handling the bankruptcy case, according to a filing dated Monday on the national enterprise bankruptcy information disclosure platform. "WM Motor's planned reorganisation will introduce strategic investors from across the globe to achieve its rebirth," the company said in a statement posted on its official Weibo account on Tuesday.

Struggling Chinese property developer Kaisa Group (1638.HK) said creditors would get less than 5% of their money back if it is forced into liquidation, a lawyer for one creditor who is suing the company told a Hong Kong court on Tuesday. Broad Peak Investment filed a winding-up petition against Kaisa in July in the Hong Kong High Court in relation to non-payment of onshore bonds worth 170 million yuan ($23.28 million).

A group of offshore creditors of China Evergrande Group said they were “left in the dark” after the developer scrapped a meeting for its multi-billion dollar restructuring plan, in the latest example of investor frustration with governance issues at some Chinese firms, Bloomberg News reported.

As developer China Evergrande Group lurched from one crisis to another over the past two years, Beijing avoided directly intervening to rescue what was not too long ago considered one of the country's "too big to fail" enterprises, Reuters reported. With the world's most indebted developer now standing at the precipice after authorities launched a criminal investigation into its billionaire founder, some creditors, investors and analysts are now betting on authorities stepping in to manage the fallout.

Sunac China Holdings Ltd. won court approval for its multibillion-dollar offshore debt restructuring plan, clearing the last key hurdle for it to become the country’s first major developer to overhaul such liabilities, Bloomberg News reported. Hong Kong Judge Jonathan Harris’ sign-off Thursday sets Sunac apart from major industry peers including China Evergrande Group. still struggling to find a viable debt-restructuring road map as an unprecedented housing crisis unfolds.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric embarks on his first trip to China with an ambitious agenda that seeks deals to make the country’s economy more efficient and help it develop beyond its traditional commodities exporter role, Bloomberg News reported. “We want to move toward a new stage that includes investments in the country that help us improve productivity,” Chile International Economic Relations Undersecretary Claudia Sanhueza said in an interview ahead of Boric’s first trip to the Asian country next week.

Pressure is building on Beijing to intervene more forcefully to restore confidence in its reeling property market, the Wall Street Journal reported. In the latest sign of stress for the market, people with knowledge of Beijing’s decision-making said authorities are investigating whether Hui Ka Yan, the billionaire founder of heavily indebted property developer China Evergrande Group, attempted to transfer assets offshore while the company was struggling to complete unfinished projects.