Shares and bonds in Reliance Communications, the struggling telecoms group run by billionaire tycoon Anil Ambani, plummeted to record lows on Monday after the company announced heavy losses over the weekend and confirmed it had missed debt repayments, the Financial Times reported. RCom said on Saturday that it had lost Rs28.2bn ($431m) before tax in the three months to the end of September, having lost Rs1.2bn in the same quarter last year. It also confirmed it had missed two rupee-denominated bond repayments in recent weeks, having entered a formal debt restructuring two weeks ago.

Reliance Communications Ltd., the Indian mobile phone operator controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, said it isn’t paying a dollar bond coupon, Bloomberg News reported. The failure to honor the obligation marks the company’s first missed interest payment on a note in the U.S. currency, and represents the latest setback amid a shakeout in the world’s second-largest telecom market. The firm announced last month the collapse of its merger plans with rival Aircel Ltd., a deal which could have helped it pare debt and better compete with rivals.

Shares in Reliance Communications jumped as much as 15.6 per cent after the troubled Indian telecom company announced a debt restructuring proposal that would hand a majority equity stake to its creditors, the Financial Times reported. RCom, controlled by tycoon Anil Ambani, has been struggling to service around Rs450bn ($6.9bn) of debt amid a price war launched by new entrant Reliance Jio, run by Mr Ambani’s brother Mukesh. Late on Monday night RCom said that, if lenders accept its plan, Rs70bn of its debt would be converted into 51 per cent of its equity.

The head of a credit fund under Indian billionaire Uday Kotak’s financial group says the government’s pledge of capital for beleaguered state banks could make it easier for distressed funds to buy loans, Bloomberg News reported. The Indian government said last week that it will inject 2.11 trillion rupees ($32 billion) of capital into state-controlled lenders over two years, as it seeks to revive growth in Asia’s third-largest economy.

The shine has come off India’s growth. Most countries would crave a growth rate as high as 5.7 per cent, but this is a setback for a country that recently boasted of growth rates higher than China’s. The slowdown exposes underlying fragilities that no triumphalist talk could conceal. What lessons the government takes from this, and how it responds, will determine the contours of the economy and its growth prospects for a long time, the Financial Times reported. The call for reforms has not gone unheeded by the government of Narendra Modi.

Sagging economic growth in India is complicating efforts to clean up a mountain of bad debt at the nation’s banks, Bloomberg News reported. Loans worth 1.7 trillion rupees ($26 billion) have been withdrawn in total since the 2001 inception of the Corporate Debt Restructuring Mechanism through to the end of August, according to the latest data from the agency that brokers agreements between borrowers and lenders. That’s a net increase of 446 billion rupees from the end of 2016, and already exceeds the 415 billion rupees of loans that couldn’t be revamped last year, the data show.

Every flailing effort by India's banks to catch their breath is pulling them deeper into a morass of bad loans, Bloomberg News reported. The latest crisis has been sparked by the failure of billionaire Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications Ltd. to merge its wireless operations with Malaysian tycoon T. Ananda Krishnan's Aircel Ltd. That combination would have reduced RCom's $7 billion debt by $2.1 billion, with a separate deal to sell 51 percent of its tower unit to Canada's Brookfield Infrastructure Group contributing a further $1.7 billion toward deleveraging.

Embattled Indian telecom company Reliance Communications Ltd faced another setback on Sunday after a deal to merge its wireless business with smaller rival Aircel was called off, raising fresh doubts around its debt restructuring plans, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The company, widely known as RCom, said it had agreed with Aircel to call off the proposed deal due to regulatory delays and legal uncertainties.

India’s top iron ore miner NMDC Ltd. is looking to sell a stake of at least 49 percent in its Chhattisgarh steel plant, as it prepares to begin production at the 3-million-ton facility in three to six months, according to a company official. The state-run miner is seeking a partner for its first steel venture, which has been eight years in development, to infuse working capital and provide steel-making expertise, the official said Monday, declining to be named in line with company policy, Bloomberg News reported. NMDC has appointed an adviser to help find an investor, the official said.

India’s Finance Minister Arun Jaitley goaded companies to boost investments as businesses bruised by a slowing economy and falling returns defer spending, Bloomberg News reported. Speaking at the Bloomberg India Economic Forum in Mumbai, Jaitley and Amitabh Kant, the chief executive officer at Niti Aayog, the nation’s economic think-tank, called for more private spending from local companies and said the banking system must get healthier to support that investment. Jaitley told companies that there’s “no need to panic,” while R.