Indian banks have only two quarters left to restructure stressed assets without significantly dragging down their profits—a fact that’s prompting banks to step up the recast of loans that may eventually need restructuring, Livemint.com reported. Effective 1 April 2015, the Reserve Bank of India’s regulatory forbearance, under which banks were allowed to qualify restructured assets as standard, will come to an end. For now banks are setting aside 5% of the value of the loan to cover the risk of default on any restructured assets.

Troubled steelmaker Lucchini said on Tuesday it planned to ask India's JSW Steel to raise its offer of less than $100 million for the Italian company's core assets in Piombino on the Tuscan coast, Reuters reported. Lucchini, Italy's second-largest steel plant by capacity, was previously owned by Russia's Severstal, but it was declared insolvent in 2012 and placed under special administration. JSW so far has made the only binding offer.

Batelco will pursue its former Indian business partner for $212 million it says he owes the company, even though he was declared bankrupt last week, the Bahraini telecom operator said on Sunday, Reuters reported. Chinnakannan Sivasankaran, the chairman of Chennai-based Siva, filed for bankruptcy in the Seychelles after a British court in June ordered Siva and Sivasankaran to pay the money to Batelco's wholly owned subsidiary BMIC. This related to their failed Indian joint venture. The court also issued an indefinite worldwide freeze on the defendants' assets.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is working with the Centre to improve governance in public sector banks, RBI governor Raghuram Rajan said on Wednesday and called for a bankruptcy code to prevent misuse of the system in future. The governor also warned of crony capitalism slowing down the economy, the Hindustan Times reported. “Do we need a bankruptcy code? absolutely! It is something I have been saying for six years in reports that we need a bankruptcy code,” he said.

India's Bhushan Steel Ltd , a debt-ridden company whose managing director was arrested last week in a bribery case, has so far been able to service its loans, its finance director told Reuters on Tuesday. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India's top crime-fighting agency, arrested Sudhir Kumar Jain, chairman of state-run lender Syndicate Bank Ltd this month over allegations he took bribes to grant loan extensions to Bhushan Steel.

India's capital markets regulator yesterday approved rules for the creation of real estate investment trusts and infrastructure-investment trusts in the country, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The step comes a month after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that these trusts would be given a tax pass-through status, meaning that they wouldn't have to pay any federal taxes as long as they pass most of their income to shareholders in the form of a dividend.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) left its benchmark lending rate unchanged Tuesday, but acknowledged progress in its fight to rid Asia's third-largest economy from the plight of high inflation and pledged to cut rates as soon as possible, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Indian central bank kept its overnight lending rate steady at 8 percent for its third policy meeting in a row. The RBI also reduced the minimum government bondholding rule—the statutory liquidity ratio—for banks by 0.50 percentage point to 22 percent with effect from the two weeks starting on Saturday.

India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn’t waste much time: Among his first acts on his first day in office was to make it a priority to recover billions of dollars stashed overseas to avoid taxes, Bloomberg News reported. Within 24 hours of his May 26 inauguration, Modi created an investigative team of former judges and current regulators to find the concealed assets, known as black money, and bring them back. At stake is what’s estimated to be as much as $2 trillion, more than India’s annual gross domestic product.

India has proposed a framework for the bankruptcy of financial institutions that will align the country with international standards, Reuters reported. Analysts suggested, however, that the regulation will increase the cost of senior funding for Indian banks if it is implemented according to the draft submitted to the market for comments. The proposals from a working group of the Reserve Bank of India call for depositors to have preference over senior creditors.

Suzlon Energy Ltd, the world’s fifth largest wind turbine maker, announced on Saturday a cash-less restructuring of its existing foreign currency convertible bonds (FCCBs) worth $485 million for five years, after nearly two years of complex negotiations with bondholders, Livemint.com reported. The Pune-based company has four different series of FCCBs issued to investors. Suzlon had failed to repay $209 million of debt on 11 October 2012 after bondholders rejected its request for a four-month extension. The default was the biggest on convertible bonds by an Indian firm.