Headlines

China’s riskiest corporate bonds are looking disproportionately expensive, a worrying sign that investors may have underestimated their risk as a tighter monetary policy and painful industrial restructuring weaken companies’ ability to repay debt, the International New York Times reported.

India’s banks, staggering under the world’s highest bad-asset ratio, may be pushed to wind up or combine with rivals if their capital levels fall below set ratios under new guidelines issued by the country’s central bank, Bloomberg News reported. The new framework would apply to all banks operating in India, including foreign lenders, according to a document posted Thursday on the Reserve Bank of India’s website.

European banks may have to plug a capital shortfall of 120 billion euros ($128 billion) if new regulations drawn up by regulators including the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision come into force as they stand, according to McKinsey & Co. The committee is putting the final touches to the Basel III post-crisis capital rules, setting stricter standards for how lenders estimate the riskiness of their assets, Bloomberg News reported. The global banking industry has dubbed this Basel IV, arguing that it constitutes a new, separate round of regulation.

President Xi Jinping gathered with his economic mandarins in December for their annual strategy meeting at a heavily guarded government hotel. In closed-door sessions, say people familiar with the confab, he made clear what their mandate was for 2017: He would tolerate no wobbliness in the economy. The communiqué coming out of the session singled out one policy objective in particular—keep the yuan stable.

Greece and its creditors say they’ve made progress in their endless negotiations over the country’s debts -- enough to avoid a default on payments worth more than 7 billion euros in July, a Bloomberg View reported. That’s good, but it was the easy part. The definitive settlement that Greece and the European Union both need still isn’t in sight. For the past seven years, the International Monetary Fund and euro-zone institutions have supported Athens with loans in exchange for fiscal austerity and structural economic reform.

UK turkey producer Bernard Matthews was pushed into insolvency by private equity firm Rutland Partners to “line [its] own pockets”, according to the chairman of a parliamentary committee. Bernard Matthews was put into a “pre-pack” administration last year, allowing it to continue trading but offload its liabilities, including its pension scheme, before its assets were sold to Ranjit Boparan for £87.5m, the Financial Times reported. Rutland earned a £14m return on its investment in the faltering company.

The trustee of Rickmers Maritime said Wednesday that the container ship operator would be winding down its business after failing to reach an agreement with creditors that would allow it to continue operating, The Wall Street Journal reported. Rickmers Trust Management Pte. Ltd.

Bonds issued by Venezuela’s state oil company rallied after the country made $2.2 billion in payments on notes that matured Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported. The $1.1 billion of notes from Petroleos de Venezuela that come due in seven months gained 2.1 cents to 87.3 cents on the dollar as of 3:17 p.m. in New York. The payment, which was confirmed by Delaware Trust Company, strengthened investor confidence that the nation can avoid default for yet another year.

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde said on Wednesday Greece was heading in the right direction on reforms, but talks on its bailout review and the IMF's potential role in it were "only halfway through". Last week, euro zone finance ministers agreed on the key elements of reforms that Greece needs to implement in exchange for a new loan under its 86 billion-euro bailout programme, the third since 2010, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Portugal’s Novo Banco, the “good” bank rescued from the collapse of Banco Espírito Santo, posted a net loss of €788.3m in 2016 after making provisions against impairments totalling €1.3bn, the lender said in a stock-market statement on Wednesday. The results compare with a net loss of €929.5m and provisions of €1bn in 2015, the bank’s first full year of operations, the Financial Times reported. Net operating income more than doubled to €386.6m, up from €125m in 2015. Net assets fell to €52.3bn, down from €57.5bn previously.