Asia Pacific

The Chinese government is struggling to contain the collapse of a stock-market rally it helped engineer, announcing late Monday that it will step up its purchases of shares to prop up sagging indexes, The Wall Street Journal reported. Chinese shares suffered their biggest one-day percentage drop in over eight years Monday, wiping out hundreds of billions of dollars of market value and putting an end to a three-week period of stability Beijing had achieved by intervening with stock purchases and other steps to stop the market’s slide.

The cost of completing the stalled $3.5 billion Baha Mar mega-resort in the Bahamas has risen to $400 million, according to a letter from the project's developer. Baha Mar Ltd, run by Sarkis Izmirlian, has offered to invest $200 million in the project alongside the resort's main lender, China's Export-Import Bank, according to a letter viewed by Reuters.

For Hong Kong, it's been one thing after another. A series of anti-China and pro-democracy protests last year prompted stores to close and mainland tour groups to cancel bookings. Meanwhile, a slowing Chinese economy and President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption and austerity campaigns have also made the Chinese more wary of buying pricey cognac and Gucci bags in the city. While still the biggest outbound destination for Chinese tour groups, Hong Kong is in danger of losing its lead.

The number of people going bankrupt has ticked up for the first time since 2009 when fallout from the global financial crisis reached its peak, The New Zealand Herald reported. Figures from the Insolvency and Trustee Services show 1979 people went bankrupt in the year to June 30, up from 1921 the previous year. The increase is small but it is a change in direction from the past five years where numbers have steadily fallen from the 3054 people who went bankrupt in the year to June 30, 2010.

The spectacle of the stock market meltdown in China has led many analysts and investors to see an upside to the downturn, Bloomberg News reported. The slump is “the most serious crisis” facing President Xi Jinping “since he came to power,” China commentator Willy Lam told an audience of academics in Vancouver on July 10. “It will require a lot to restore people’s confidence in the regime.” Volatility might force the state to clean up the unregulated loans fueling stock purchases and to intervene less in equity markets and the broader economy.

The Chinese company building the $3.5 billion Baha Mar resort in the Bahamas plans to file a motion to dismiss the bankruptcy case related to the project, which is nearly complete and seen as vital to the former British colony's fragile economy, Reuters reported. China Construction America (CCA), a unit of Chinese State Construction Engineering Corp Ltd, could file the motion to dismiss as early as Monday afternoon, a lawyer for the firm told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Carey during a hearing in Wilmington, Delaware.

The huge scale of Chinese government intervention to staunch a stock market sell-off has been revealed by reports showing the country’s biggest state-owned banks have provided the equivalent of more than $200bn to help prop up equities, the Financial Times reported. Much larger than previously disclosed, the lending to the country’s margin finance agency highlights the sense of urgency with which top officials viewed the threat to the financial system and the broader economy as the stock market cratered earlier this month.

Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie plans to take control of an unfinished $3.5 billion mega resort, currently tied up in a corporate bankruptcy process, and push it through to completion to help bolster his country's fragile economy, Reuters reported. Christie, in a speech Thursday night, called for liquidators to take control of the Baha Mar resort and casino project. A fully operational resort would employ about 5,000 people and boost the Bahamas' gross domestic product by more than 10 percent.

One of Spain’s “ghost airports”—expensive projects that were virtually unused—received just one bid in a bankruptcy auction after costing about €1.1 billion ($1.2 billion) to build, The Wall Street Journal reported. The buyer’s offer: €10,000. Ciudad Real’s Central airport, about 235 kilometers south of Madrid, became a symbol of the country’s wasteful spending during a construction boom that ended with the financial crisis of 2008, the year the airport opened. The operator of the airport went bankrupt in 2012 after it failed to draw enough traffic.

The troubled $3.5 billion Baha Mar resort project in the Bahamas is preparing to wind down operations and cut more than 2,000 jobs if the developer fails to strike a deal quickly with its main lender, China's Export Import Bank, according to U.S. bankruptcy court filings, Reuters reported. The sprawling Baha Mar resort, developed by Sarkis Izmirlian, the son of an Armenian billionaire, had ramped up hiring earlier this year in anticipation of a March opening.