Asia Pacific

Last month more than 30 provincial taxi drivers drank poison and collapsed together on the busiest shopping street in Beijing in a dramatic protest against economic and working conditions in their home town, the Financial Times reported. The drivers, who the police say all survived, were from Suifenhe, a city on the Russian border in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang.

Three-quarters of the world’s workers are temporary, casual or self-employed and this sort of employment is likely to become more prevalent, says the International Labour Organisation. The ILO, a UN agency that specialises in work, analysed employment patterns in 180 countries and found that the “standard” model of permanent full-time employment was “less and less dominant” in rich, developed economies, the Financial Times reported. In developing economies, salaried employment was still growing as a share of the total workforce but that historical trend appeared to be slowing.

Mid-tier stockbroker BBY has been placed in administration after the board could not secure enough capital, the firm said in a statement this morning. KPMG has been appointed voluntary administrator and BBY suspended by the ASX as a market participant. Financier St George Bank has sent in PPB as receivers to protect the bank’s interests. “I regret to inform staff that despite exhaustive efforts by the BBY board to secure investors to inject additional capital into BBY we have been unsuccessful,” said BBY executive chairman Glenn Rosewall, in a note to staff.

As China's economy slows and Beijing becomes more relaxed about letting its companies fail, a rising number of foreign bondholders risk being caught up in the country's unpredictable court system, Reuters reported. Last month, solar producer Baoding Tianwei Baobian Electric became China's first ever state-owned company to default on a bond coupon payment, showing Beijing's increasing willingness to let companies go bust in a bid to reform its corporate market. Also in April, Kaisa Group became the first Chinese property developer to fail to pay a coupon on its U.S.

Multinational companies drawn to Southeast Asia by hopes of a long consumption boom are witnessing a reversal of fortunes in its three biggest economies as shoppers lose their mojo, the Financial Times reported. Household debt, sluggish wage rises and political uncertainties are dragging on spending growth in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Sharp Corporation of Japan said it had secured a $1.7 billion bailout from banks, its second major rescue in three years, after its smartphone display business came under intense pricing pressure from Asian rivals, the International New York Times reported. Mizuho Bank and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ will inject a combined 200 billion yen in a debt-for-equity swap, Sharp said in a statement, a move that will buy it time but is unlikely to allay worries about the long-term viability of its display business.

The Chinese economy continued to slow in April, prompting predictions of more fiscal and monetary stimulus from Beijing, much of which is likely to end up in the booming domestic stock market, the Financial Times reported. Fixed asset investment, a key driver of the economy, expanded by 12 per cent in the first four months of the year from a year earlier, the slowest pace since 2000 and down from 13.5 per cent in the first quarter.

A year after declaring the days of “borrow and spend” were over for Australia, treasurer Joe Hockey on Tuesday shifted the government’s strategy to boosting the economy by ruling out fresh austerity measures, the Financial Times reported. Delivering his second budget against the backdrop of a collapse in commodity prices and lacklustre growth, Mr Hockey cut taxes for small businesses and increased spending on childcare and infrastructure in a bid to create jobs.

The Australian government announced a world-leading crackdown on Monday on alleged tax avoidance by 30 multinational companies that will likely force them to restructure their businesses before next year, the Irish Times reported. “These companies are diverting profits earned in Australia away from Australia to no-tax or low-tax jurisdictions,” treasurer Joe Hockey told reporters in Canberra. He declined to identify the targets, but said “it’s pretty evident which companies are involved”.

Having delivered an interest-rate cut to help big state-owned companies and local governments cope with debilitating debt, China’s central bank is grappling with another thorny task: how to steer credit to the private businesses Beijing deems crucial to growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. The quarter-percentage-point reduction in benchmark lending and deposit rates on Sunday was primarily aimed at addressing debt-repayment problems that are increasingly weighing on the Chinese economy.