Live news: China Evergrande files for bankruptcy in New York

Summits: US president Joe Biden hosts Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol at Camp David on Friday. Biden is set to announce a landmark trilateral agreement that will help Washington and its Asian allies boost deterrence against North Korea and China.

Economic data: Malaysia publishes second-quarter GDP figures on Friday. Economists expect the data to show growth slowing in the quarter that ended in June. Japan, meanwhile, releases consumer price index figures for July.

Markets: Stocks futures declined in Japan and Hong Kong on Friday. A rise in US sovereign bond yields, which neared their highest levels since 2007 on Thursday, weighed on the country’s equities, with the Nasdaq Composite dropping 1.2 per cent and the S&P 500 ending 0.8 per cent lower.

Singapore: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is to give a National Day Rally speech on Sunday, some 10 days after the country’s National Day holiday on August 8. The speech is considered among the most significant political addresses of the year in the island-state.

Troubled property group China Evergrande has filed for bankruptcy protection in a New York federal court using the so-called Chapter 15 process for foreign companies seeking recognition of their restructuring in the US.

According to the petition, Evergrande is also pursuing a parallel “scheme of arrangement” in the Cayman Islands, as well as a restructuring proceeding pending before the High Court of Hong Kong.

The petition was signed by Jimmy Fong, who represented himself as “foreign representative” of China Evergrande Group. A meeting of “scheme creditors” is set for August 23 at the Hong Kong office of Sidley Austin, the US-based law firm representing Evergrande.

Shares in CVS Health fell more than 8.1 per cent — its biggest daily fall since October — at the close on Thursday following a decision by one of California’s largest health insurers to drop the company’s Caremark unit as its main pharmacy benefit manager.

Blue Shield of California said it would work with other companies, including Amazon and the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, to supply medicines to its 4.8mn customers.

The insurer said the US drug purchasing system, which is dominated by PBMs — essentially drug middlemen — is “broken”, and that it expects to save $500mn in annual drug costs with its new model.

Shares in Cigna and UnitedHealth, both with PBM units, were down 6.4 per cent and 2 per cent respectively.

The US government has escalated a trade dispute with Mexico over its ban on genetically modified corn, reflecting the political power of US corn belt states ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Washington requested a dispute resolution panel on Thursday, which would make a binding decision under the US-Mexico-Canada trade pact.

The trade dispute is also reputational, with the US contending that genetically modified corn is not harmful for humans.

Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration has said the measures to limit genetically modified corn are to protect the population’s health. The US claims the rules violate the trilateral trade agreement and are not based on scientific evidence.

A Citadel credit fund has agreed to provide most of the pricey financing to bankrupt trucking company Yellow, having recently acquired an existing $500mn loan to the group previously held by Apollo Global Management.

Yellow has secured a $142.5mn bankruptcy loan and struck a deal to sell its real estate for $1.3bn, its lawyers told federal bankruptcy court on Thursday.

That deal will have the Citadel fund provide $100mn of so-called debtor-in-possession financing, while Yellow’s largest stockholder, MFN partners, will provide the remaining $42.5mn.

Estes Express Lines has bid $1.3bn for Yellow’s terminals, which would cover all the group’s existing secured debt. Yellow, which filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month, is also seeking to sell its remaining assets, including trucks and trailers.