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In a related story, Bloomberg News reported that a committee of credit-default swaps traders said that Ukraine’s decision to freeze bond payments may trigger payouts on contracts insuring against losses on the country’s debt. The ruling is the first step toward a so-called credit event that would allow the settlement of about $396 million of the derivatives contracts, the International Swaps & Derivatives Association said on its website Wednesday. Ukraine would have to actually miss the payment before any final decision is made, the group said.

After its bond payment default, Amtek Auto is likely to find it difficult to get more funding from lenders, the Business Standard reported. Loans given earlier to the Delhi-based automobile components maker are now classified as Special Mention Account-2, where interest and/or principal are due since 60 days. A loan is classified as non-performing if not serviced for at least 90 days.

Risks to Europe's inflation and growth outlook have increased due to the emerging market slowdown but the European Central Bank needs more time before deciding on further stimulus, ECB President Mario Draghi said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Draghi said price growth will take longer than previously expected to rise back to the ECB's near 2 percent target and that the euro zone's central bank is ready to beef up its 1 trillion euro plus asset buying program if needed.

As Germany has emerged as the dominant actor in Europe, it has lectured Greece and other debtor nations on the virtues of thrift and lately wagged its finger at countries that balk at receiving a share of refugees from the killing fields of Syria. Its right to lead, based on a narrative of self-sacrifice and obedience to rules, was generally acknowledged, the International New York Times reported. That is one reason the Volkswagen scandal has shaken the country’s very core.

Britain’s steelmakers are urging the government to rescue the industry from a “perfect storm” that has pushed one of the UK’s largest steelworks to the edge of closure, The Guardian reported. UK Steel, the industry lobby group, said its members were facing their most difficult situation since privatisation 27 years ago after battling cheap imports, which are pushing down prices to unsustainable levels. The threatened closure of the largest steelworks on Teesside has sent shockwaves through the industry, leading unions and employers to call on the government for extra support.

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).

For decades, an army of migrant workers drove China’s boom times, flocking to its cities to sew T-shirts, assemble iPhones, or build apartment blocks and Olympic stadiums, The Wall Street Journal reported. The arrangement helped millions of poor, rural Chinese join a new consumer class, though many also paid a heavy price. Now, many migrant workers struggle to find their footing in a downshifting economy. As factories run out of money and construction projects turn idle across China, there has been a rise in the last thing Beijing wants to see: unrest.

The personal insolvency law could have a budget impact of EUR 271 million in five years, Romania-Insider.co reported. This has been calculated based on the total number of potential insolvencies, which amounts to 800,000, and the monthly tariff of RON 100 – 300 (EUR 22.6 – 68) per file, which would be covered by the state, said Alexandru Stanescu, consultant within the World Bank. However, this was not a bank’s analysis, but a personal one, an estimation, Stanescu added. The Government should have mentioned the budgetary impact of this law, and the tariffs that administrators will charge.

Local financing networks are unravelling across China as the economic slowdown bites into one of the weakest but most enduring links in the financial system — pulling hundreds of thousands of investors down with it, the Financial Times reported. These networks flourished as long as sentiment was high and rapid economic growth persisted. Now, however, investors are taking to the streets across the country as they seek to recoup their losses. Money ploughed into financing schemes that went bust in 2014 amounted to more than Rmb100bn ($16bn).

A Chinese probe found evidence that Citic Securities Co., the nation’s biggest brokerage, engaged in insider trading connected to the government’s rescue of the stock market, people familiar with the matter said, Bloomberg News reported. A preliminary investigation concluded that the brokerage used advance knowledge of government-orchestrated stock purchases to execute trades that benefited the firm, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private.