Asia Pacific

The four of five bills comprising the insolvency framework will not be tabled to the House Plenary today, as the Budgetary and Interior Committees could not conclude the discussion of the four bills, Chairman of the Budgetary Affairs Committee Nicolas Papadopoulos has said, the Famagusta Gazette reported.

Eighty-six years old and still job hunting. Wong Siu-ying had to stop passing out leaflets on a Hong Kong flyover when she hurt her knee in August. With two-thirds of her social security income spent on rent and no steady allowance from her three children, retirement isn’t an option, the Irish Times reported. “It isn’t enough,” Wong said of the roughly HK$2,200 ($284) a month she gets from the government, which provides a benefit to the elderly as a supplementary income, with the expectation families will pay for living expenses.

China’s superrich are nervously watching as the Chinese currency weakens against the dollar, The Wall Street Journal reported. Because of the extreme concentration of money at the apex of Chinese society, national stability rests to an extraordinary extent in the hands of just two million or so families. They are the top 1% of urban households, and already, their confidence in China’s future under President Xi Jinping is shaky.

Japan's biggest airline, ANA Holdings Inc, said it was considering injecting capital into Skymark Airlines Inc as part of a rehabilitation plan for the bankrupt domestic budget carrier, Reuters reported. Besides ANA, other investors have also expressed interest in participating in a rescue package for Skymark, according to media reports and sources. Skymark holds valuable slots at Tokyo's crowded Haneda airport, making it attractive to potential investors. Skymark last month sought protection from creditors, blaming a weak yen and a dispute with jet maker Airbus Group for its financial woes.

A third dry cargo shipper has filed for bankruptcy this month following a collapse in freight rates to historic lows in what shippers call the worst market conditions since the 1980s, Commodities Now reported. South Korea's Daebo International Shipping Co Ltd filed a court receivership, a form of corporate bankruptcy, on Feb. 11, mainly due to poor dry bulk market conditions, a company official said on Monday. It is the third known bulk shipper bankruptcy this month.

India’s legion of heavily indebted companies took heart last week as shares in Suzlon Energy soared nearly a third on news that the ailing wind-turbine manufacturer had sold a 23 per cent stake to Dilip Shanghvi, the billionaire pharmaceutical tycoon, for Rs18bn ($290m), the Financial Times reported. The investment drew attention partly because of its buyer. Mr Shanghvi, India’s second-richest man, boasts a reputation as a canny entrepreneur.

Japanese financial services provider Orix Corp has expressed interest in participating in the reconstruction of budget airline Skymark Airlines Inc, two people familiar with the situation said. Skymark, which filed for bankruptcy last month and agreed on a sponsorship deal with Tokyo-based fund Integral, is seeking co-sponsors to help it turn around its business, Reuters reported. Thursday was the deadline for non-aviation companies to submit expressions of interest. Airlines will have until Feb. 23.

Small business owners, particularly in the construction industry, should be breathing a sigh of relief this week. The Supreme Court has delivered a decision which upholds their rights to keep payments made by companies which subsequently go into liquidation, against demands from liquidators to "claw back" the money so that it can be used to satisfy the claims of other creditors of the insolvent company, The New Zealand Herald reported.

A second dry cargo shipper has filed for bankruptcy following a collapse in freight rates that has forced many companies to idle vessels used to haul iron ore, coal and grain rather than hire out the ships at a loss, Reuters reported. Weaker demand from China and an oversupply of ships has led to the worst industry downturn in 30 years, pushing the Baltic dry index - the industry benchmark for freight rates - to an all-time low. China's Winland Ocean Shipping Corp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States on Feb.

Japan’s latest recession was as short as it was unexpected, the International New York Times reported. The Japanese economy, the world’s third-largest, started expanding again at the end of 2014, government data showed Monday, after a painful midyear slump that had raised doubts about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s efforts to rekindle growth and end entrenched deflation. The latest in what seem like countless Japanese downturns — there have been six since 1997 — lasted just two quarters, the shortest technical definition of a recession.