Asia Pacific

It may be too soon for the Philippine central bank to pause from raising interest rates at its next policy meeting in May, Governor Felipe Medalla said, signaling its most aggressive tightening cycle in two decades could continue, Bloomberg News reported. May is “too early” to pause, “unless we actually see a price fall,” Medalla said in an interview Thursday on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations forum in Bali, Indonesia.

China is seeking a new international order with Beijing as the dominant player, and the European Union must be more assertive in defending its security and economic interests, including possible EU-wide controls on outbound investment, the bloc’s top official said Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported.

KG Mobility Co., the South Korean automaker formerly known as Ssangyong Motor Co. before going through bankruptcy, is seeking to revive its fortunes with a $30,000 electric sports utility vehicle, Bloomberg News reported. The carmaker Thursday unveiled four new vehicles at the Seoul Mobility Show, including the Torres EVX, its first electric car since conglomerate KG Group bought a majority stake in the firm in September 2022. Using lithium-iron-phosphate batteries made by BYD Co., the SUV has a driving range of 500 kilometers (310 miles) on a single charge.

Catalina Marketing Corp., a data and marketing services provider to retailers and consumer products companies, filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday for the second time with a prepackaged plan to slash debt and sell its business in Japan, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Catalina has suffered from a decline in demand for its services in recent years, including during the Covid-19 pandemic when most retailers were forced to close their doors, according to a court filing yesterday by Chief Financial Officer Michael Huffmaster.

Luc Despins, a New York bankruptcy lawyer, typically took on difficult jobs: After the energy company Enron collapsed years ago, he helped thousands of victims recover some of their money. But when Mr. Despins was appointed by a bankruptcy court last year to locate the assets of Guo Wengui, a Chinese property mogul and political provocateur who had failed to repay tens of millions of dollars to a hedge fund, the assignment presented very different challenges, the New York Times reported. In November, protesters appeared outside his home and that of his ex-wife.

Scott’s Refrigerated Logistics may have been insolvent nine months before its collapse, according to the company’s administrators McGrathNicol, the Financial Review reported. The Anchorage Capital Partners-owned transportation group – one of the largest in the country and a key supplier to retailers including Coles, Aldi and IGA – collapsed in late February. In a report lodged with the corporate regulator, McGrathNicol said it was also possible the company had been insolvent, on a cash flow basis, only a week before they were called in.

Japan's JOLED, a company formed in a 2015 merger of the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) businesses of Panasonic and Sony, said on Monday that it had filed for bankruptcy protection at the Tokyo District Court, Nikkei Asia reported. JOLED has total liabilities of 33.7 billion yen ($257 million). JOLED's troubles are part of the long decline of Japan's display industry, which has undergone repeated realignments to try to compete with South Korean and Chinese rivals.

U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled a new indictment against Sam Bankman-Fried, accusing the founder of now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange of conspiring to pay a $40 million bribe to Chinese government officials, Reuters reported. The new bribery conspiracy charge adds the pressure on the 31-year-old former billionaire, who now faces a 13-count indictment over the November collapse of FTX.

The Turkish central bank has so tightened its grip over the foreign-exchange market in the runup to May’s presidential election that it’s become the matchmaker for most large transactions, according to several traders who spoke on condition of anonymity. Nearly every trade larger than a few million dollars is subject to its scrutiny and approval, they said, Bloomberg News reported. The traders describe a central bank that’s constantly on the phone with banks, that tracks and vets prices as soon as bids appear on trading platforms, and demands detailed reports on currency operations.

China spent $240 billion bailing out 22 developing countries between 2008 and 2021, with the amount soaring in recent years as more have struggled to repay loans spent building "Belt and Road" infrastructure, a study published on Tuesday showed, Reuters reported. Almost 80% of the lending was made between 2016 and 2021, mainly to middle-income countries including Argentina, Mongolia and Pakistan, according to the report by researchers from the World Bank, Harvard Kennedy School, AidData and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.