Some of China's top banks have sharpened scrutiny of smaller peers' asset quality and have tightened standards for interbank lending, three sources said, in an effort to curb credit risk as a deepening property debt crisis ripples through the economy, Reuters reported. Two of China's biggest state-owned banks and a leading joint-stock bank have stepped up reviews of smaller lenders over the past couple of months to identify those with poor asset quality and have a high risk of default, the sources said.
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India’s economy is booming. Stock prices are through the roof, among the best performing in the world. The government’s investment in airports, bridges and roads, and clean-energy infrastructure is visible almost everywhere. India’s total output, or gross domestic product, is expected to increase 6 percent this year — faster than the United States or China. But there’s a hitch: Investment by Indian companies is not keeping pace, the New York Times reported. The money that companies put into the future of their businesses, for things like new machines and factories, is stagnant.
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China’s factory activity shrank in December to the lowest level in six months, fueling expectations the government may have to act soon to add impetus to the economy, Bloomberg News reported. The official manufacturing purchasing managers index declined to 49, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement on Sunday. That was weaker than the median forecast of 49.6 by economists in a Bloomberg survey, and matched the reading seen in June.
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China's "reunification" with Taiwan is inevitable, President Xi Jinping said in his New Year's address on Sunday, striking a stronger tone than he did last year with less than two weeks to go before the Chinese-claimed island elects a new leader, Reuters reported. The Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary elections are happening at a time of fraught relations between Beijing and Taipei. China has been ramping up military pressure to assert its sovereignty claims over democratically governed Taiwan.
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One of China’s largest investment firms, Citic Trust, had a clear pitch to investors when it was aiming to raise $1.7 billion to fund property development in 2020: There is no safer Chinese investment than real estate, according to a New York Times analysis. The trust, the investment arm of the state-owned financial conglomerate Citic, called housing “China’s economic ballast” and “an indispensable value investment.” The money it raised would be put toward four projects from Sunac China Holdings, a major developer.
The Serie A leaders are currently leading their domestic league and they have also qualified for the knockout stage of the Champions League, CaughtOffSide reported. The news of their bankruptcy started surfacing in the media after they paid their 10 board members their annual compensation. Their corporate CEO, Alessandro Antonello, and the CEO of the sports area, Giuseppe Marotta, received less compensation compared to the previous financial year.
China's November industrial profits posted double-digit gains as overall manufacturing improved, although soft demand continued to constrain business growth expectations, emboldening calls for more macro policy support, Reuters reported. The 29.5% profit rise came on top of a 2.7% increase in October and alongside a pickup in industrial output in November, although other sectors of the world's second-largest economy still missed forecasts.
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Chinese assets have had a terrible year—but China’s currency is gaining ground as an international payments option, the Wall Street Journal reported. The yuan’s status as a global currency still faces a huge obstacle in the form of China’s own capital controls. Even so, rising willingness to conduct trade in yuan could help insulate China’s economy, at least to an extent, in the event sanctions were imposed in a hypothetical future conflict with the West.
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China's top planning body said on Saturday it had identified a second batch of public investment projects, including flood control and disaster relief programmes, under a bond issuance and investment plan announced in October to boost the economy, Reuters reported. With the latest tranche, China has now earmarked more than 800 billion yuan of its 1 trillion yuan ($140 billion) in additional government bond issuance in the fourth quarter, as it focuses on fiscal steps to shore up the flagging economy.
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China’s biggest banks are lowering the deposit rates offered to savers, a move that could pave the way for the central bank to make interest-rate cuts to spur economic growth, the Wall Street Journal reported. Five state-owned lenders and joint-stock bank China Merchants Bank said the rate cuts took effect on Friday. The five were Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and Bank of Communications.
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