Asia Pacific

Thailand revealed plans Tuesday to provide $312 million in loans to help its financially strapped farmers, many of whom are in debt to loan sharks, in the latest step by the military junta to help boost the economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. Loan sharks, who charge as much as 60% in interest a year, have thrived amid growing household debt, which rose to 82.3% of gross domestic product this year. Economists are concerned Thailand's high household debt will reduce consumption, a major engine driving the country's economic growth.

PT Bumi Resources’ bonds climbed the most in two weeks after holders of its $375 million of convertible debt approved a restructuring in a near-unanimous vote, Bloomberg News reported. The Indonesian coal mining company will issue 6 percent notes due April 2018 to replace the existing 9.25 percent securities that matured Aug. 5, a plan ratified by bondholders at a meeting in Singapore on Aug. 22. The proposal was supported by investors holding more than 98 percent of the debt, director Dileep Srivastava said in an e-mail after the meeting.

Major reforms of insolvency laws are in the process of being enacted, as Singapore tries to position itself as a regional hub for insolvency work and debt restructuring, said Senior Minister of State for Law Indranee Rajah on Monday, Channel NewsAsia reported. Speaking at the Regional Insolvency Conference organised by the Law Society of Singapore, she noted that an increase in global interest rates and a tightening of liquidity in markets are likely to increase the risk of corporate defaults. This could in turn lead to an increase in a number of restructuring and insolvencies.

On desolate salt flats on the far outskirts of China’s sixth-largest city, dozens of enormous half-built skyscrapers stand as a monument to the excess and optimism of the Chinese real estate market, the Financial Times reported. As physical manifestations of China’s property bubble go, few examples can beat this effort to replicate Wall Street in a wasteland 40km outside Tianjin and 150km from the capital Beijing.

The boss of failed airline Air Australia has returned to the travel sector in a senior management role despite being banned by the corporate regulator over conduct that critics claimed wreaked "havoc" in the industry, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission last year disqualified Michael James from managing corporations for three years for failing to act with care and diligence in the lead-up to the spectacular collapse of the airline in February, 2012.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang urged the heavily scrutinised railway sector to seek more private investment and rely less on state support as a key plank of its reform, the government website said on Sunday, the International New York Times reported. Beijing has vowed to deepen reforms of its state-owned enterprises and to open up protected industries such as finance, petroleum, power, telecoms and railways to private investors for the first time.

The Cabinet will this week likely ask parliament to issue a binding resolution stating that an insolvency framework will be passed and take effect as of January 1, Cyprus Mail reported. The resolution will be binding on both the government and the legislature, sources said. Opposition parties want, in writing, additional and concurrent safeguards for homeowners who have trouble servicing their mortgage, otherwise threatening to vote down the government’s foreclosures bill.

Bank of China Ltd. more than doubled its money set aside for bad loans as profit growth cooled to the slowest pace in five quarters on weakness in the economy, Bloomberg News reported. Provisions for potential soured debt climbed to 12.7 billion yuan ($2.1 billion) in the second quarter, up 116 percent from a year earlier, based on half-year figures released by the Beijing-based company yesterday. Net income rose 8.5 percent to 44.4 billion yuan, the earnings statement showed.

China said it will curb executive pay and perks at major state-controlled companies as part of an austerity program intended to curb government largess, The Wall Street Journal reported. The official Xinhua News Agency said Monday that President Xi Jinping called for the government to more tightly regulate executive salaries at state-owned enterprises and to make adjustment for "unreasonably high" compensation. He also called on SOEs to rein in other compensation such as spending on cars and accommodations, Xinhua said.

Government investigators in China have found the Mercedes-Benz unit of Daimler, the German automaker, in violation of antitrust price rules, the Chinese state news media reported on Monday. The announcement was the latest in a spate of inquiries over pricing and sales policies that have raised pressure on foreign corporations across China, the International New York Times reported.