Headlines

China's largest private real estate developer Country Garden is seeking to delay payment on a private onshore bond for the first time, the latest sign of a stifling cash crunch in the property sector, piling pressure on Beijing to step in, Reuters reported. Adding to worries about contagion risk, a major Chinese trust company that traditionally had sizable exposure to real estate, Zhongrong International Trust Co, has missed its repayment obligations on some investment products.

For more than a quarter-century, China has been synonymous with relentless development and upward mobility. As its 1.4 billion people gained an appetite for the wares of the world — Hollywood movies, South Korean electronics, iron ore mined in Australia — the global economy was propelled by a seemingly inexhaustible engine. Now that engine is sputtering, posing alarming risks for Chinese households and economies around the planet, the New York Times reported.

Bidders for crisis-stricken retailer Wilko have been given a Wednesday deadline to table offers to buy the firm, The Independent reported. The historic high street chain fell into administration last week, putting the future of its 400 stores and 12,500 workers in jeopardy. It is understood that administrators from PwC have set the deadline as they quickly seek to strike a deal which could save jobs. Wilko is continuing to trade and has not announced any redundancies after formally entering insolvency last week.

Deutsche Bank has settled the loans it extended to Go Airlines out of court with its promoters Wadia Group, people aware of the development said. Go Airlines, which operated Go First Airlines, is undergoing voluntary liquidation, the Economic Times of India reported. Last week, Deutsche Bank conveyed to its resolution professional Shailendra Ajmera and lenders that it wants to relinquish itself as a member of the committee of creditors (CoC) since it has separately settled its debt with the promoter.

India’s capital markets watchdog has sought yet another 15 days to finish up the almost three-year-long investigation into Gautam Adani’s eponymous conglomerate, after the three-month extension already granted by the nation’s Supreme Court ended on Monday, Bloomberg News reported. The Securities and Exchange Board of India told the Supreme Court that it needs the additional time to wrap up work on seven out of the 24 matters it has been asked to investigate in the wake of the scathing attack by shortseller Hindenburg Research that accused the Adani Group of wide-ranging corporate malfeasance.

The world’s biggest economies are offering huge subsidies in a cutthroat race to win the industries of the future. The losers: all the countries that can’t pay up, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. New tax credits for manufacturing batteries, solar-power equipment and other green technology are drawing a flood of capital to the U.S. The European Union is trying to respond with its own green-energy support package. Japan has announced plans for $150 billion of borrowing to finance a wave of investment in green technology.

Argentina is hiking interest rates and devaluing its currency in a bid to reassure markets as assets went into free fall Monday after a populist who vowed to burn down the central bank won surprisingly strong support in a primary vote, Bloomberg News reported. The government rushed to devalue its official exchange rate as much as 18% to around 350 pesos per dollar and hiked its key rate by 21 percentage points to 18% in a drastic policy shift as it runs out of funds to defend its currency.

Chile's central bank could consider interest rate cuts of 75 or 100 basis points at its next meetings, minutes from the board's July meeting showed on Monday, while also cautioning that inflation remained high, Reuters reported. The bank's board voted unanimously in July to cut the benchmark interest rate by 100 basis points to 10.25%, although some board members expressed concern about the move, according to the minutes.

Global regulators spent more than a decade trying to ensure that a large bank could fail without any government support. Despite this year’s bank failures, they are still working on it, the Wall Street Journal reported. Global regulators are reviewing the March failures, including Credit Suisse’s collapse and Swiss officials’ decision to push UBS to acquire its rival in a deal with billions of public money, people familiar with the probe said.

Russia's central bank will hold an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday to discuss the level of its key interest rate, it said on Monday, as the sharply weakening rouble prompted calls for higher borrowing costs, Reuters reported. President Vladimir Putin's economic adviser rebuked the central bank on Monday as the rouble slid past 101 per U.S. dollar, blaming loose monetary policy in a sign of growing discord among Russia's monetary authorities. The bank, whose key rate is currently 8.5%, had been scheduled to hold its next meeting on rates on Sept. 15.