Asia Pacific

A consortium of investors in debt-laden Chinese developer Kaisa Group Holding led by Farallon Capital has drafted a proposal that would inject $650 million into the company and result in higher recovery for bondholders, documents seen by Reuters showed. Under the proposal, the consortium would inject $150 million into the company with the rest coming from existing shareholders exercising warrants to buy heavily discounted shares. That purchase would result in the consortium owning a 20 percent stake, with existing shareholders getting an additional $5 million in cash on a pro-rata basis.

The chief financial regulator said Wednesday that he will help creditors speed up restructuring of steel, petrochemical and shipping companies struggling to stay afloat after being hit hard by low demand in global markets, The Korea Times reported. Financial Services Commission Chairman Yim Jong-yong said he will support companies with potential to recover by injecting fresh money while kicking out corporations which are not sustainable. "We will discuss with other government agencies ways to strengthen competitiveness in the fields and directions for restructuring.

TPK Holding Co (宸鴻), a major supplier of touchpanels for Apple Inc’s iPhone 6S and Watch, yesterday reported a quarterly loss of NT$19.39 billion (US$595 million) due to massive asset impairments, The Taipei Times reported. The company said it is undertaking a drastic restructuring as lackluster demand for touchscreen notebook computers has affected its factory utilization rate, leaving some of its equipment idle. TPK posted NT$18.97 billion in impaired assets last month, mainly from unprofitable and idled equipment.

The Baha Mar resort’s Chinese lender has decided to foreclose on the $3.5 billion resort in the Bahamas and has appointed a receiver to bring the delayed project to completion, roughly six weeks after it was thrown out of bankruptcy protection in the U.S. The move by the Export-Import Bank of China, which received Bahamian court approval to name Deloitte to the receiver role, comes a few weeks after some 2,000 employees in the Bahamas lost their jobs at the partially completed resort at the request of court-appointed liquidators.

India's government on Wednesday published long-awaited proposals to overhaul an outdated and overburdened bankruptcy process, calling for public comment on what could become the country's first unified bankruptcy code. The proposed bill aims to dramatically speed up decisions on whether to save or liquidate ailing companies, in a move to curb asset stripping and ensure higher recovery rates for creditors - both key to fostering a modern credit market and increased investment in India.

Kazakhstan is set to embark upon its most ambitious privatisation plan since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, offering stakes in its largest state-owned enterprises to international investors in preparation for eventual stock market flotations, officials told the Financial Times on Tuesday. The move coincides with a warning from Nursultan Nazarbayev, president, that the world faces “economic turbulence” that for many emerging market countries could dwarf the impact of the global financial crisis of 2008-09.

China’s top leader sent the strongest signal yet that the government expects the world’s second-largest economy to shift to a slower pace, suggesting Beijing could tolerate growth as low as 6.5%, The Wall Street Journal reported. President Xi Jinping warned that China’s economy faces domestic and global uncertainties, as his government began Tuesday to reveal details of its next five-year plan via China’s official Xinhua News Agency.

In Texas or the North Sea, oil companies struggling with falling prices are firing thousands of employees. In Kazakhstan, it is not so simple, the Financial Times reported. The central Asian nation was a poster child of the past decade’s oil boom, building a futuristic capital on the steppe with its hydrocarbon riches, but this year’s tumble in prices has pushed many of Kazakhstan’s Soviet-era oilfields into the red.

Debt-laden Chinese developer Kaisa Group Holding is close to finalising a deal with its onshore creditors, a senior advisor said, days after the company said its talks with offshore creditors were also progressing, Reuters reported. Kaisa became the first Chinese property developer to default on its offshore debt payments. The company which owes almost $11 billion, of which $2.5 billion is due to overseas creditors, is in the midst of debt restructuring talks which have helped support its bonds.

He has been called China’s Carl Icahn. But the billionaire owner of one of the country’s most successful investment firms is now the latest suspect in the broadening crackdown on corruption in the financial industry, the International New York Times reported. The fund manager, Xu Xiang, nicknamed Big Xu, was arrested in dramatic Hollywood fashion, more worthy of a spy movie than a financier. As the police closed in, the highway patrol sealed the 22-mile Hangzhou Bay Bridge for more than 30 minutes and eventually apprehended Mr. Xu near the exit, according to state media.