Asia Pacific

A group of creditors of Mt Gox, the collapsed Bitcoin exchange, is threatening a shake-up of bankruptcy proceedings in Tokyo unless the administrator settles its claims in the virtual currency, the Financial Times reported. Once the world’s largest trading venue for trading and storing Bitcoin, Mt Gox went offline in February saying it had lost track of about 750,000 bitcoins belonging to customers and another 100,000 of its own.

The Japanese government trimmed its economic-growth forecast for the current fiscal year ending in March but said that it won't give up on its long battle to bring its debt issuance under control, The Wall Street Journal reported. The world's third-largest economy is projected to grow 1.2% in the fiscal year ending next March, figures released by the Cabinet Office showed Tuesday. That compares with its previous projection in January for a 1.4% increase.

China’s total debt load has climbed to more than two and a half times the size of its economy, underscoring the difficult challenge facing Beijing as it seeks to spur growth without sowing the seeds of a financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. The total debt-to-gross domestic product ratio in the world’s second-largest economy reached 251 per cent at the end of June, up from just 147 per cent at the end of 2008, according to a new estimate from Standard Chartered bank.

An estimated 114 building and construction-related companies have gone to the wall in Canberra since the start of last year, leaving behind more than $80 million in debts, Australian Securities and Investments Commission data has revealed, The Canberra Times reported. With the downturn in the building, home improvement and renovation sector expected to worsen as public servants remain uncertain about their futures, ACT insolvency specialists say the snowballing "tsunami" of economic pain documented in wind-up notices on the ASIC website won’t end soon.

The government fund that owns a majority stake in Malaysia Airlines is increasingly leaning toward taking the company private, after the carrier lost a second plane in five months, according to people familiar with the matter. Khazanah Nasional Bhd., Malaysia's state investment fund and holder of a 69% stake in flag-carrier operator Malaysian Airline System Bhd., had already been considering a purchase of the rest of the company, along with other restructuring proposals, even before a full flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in Ukraine on Thursday.

China's major banks have halted an experimental program, sanctioned by the country's central bank, that helped citizens transfer large sums overseas despite government capital controls, according to people with knowledge of the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported. The halt, which the people said was likely to be temporary, comes after the program was criticized by China's powerful state television broadcaster, underscoring the political sensitivity of the issue of wealthy Chinese moving money abroad.

Junior iron-ore company Sherwin Iron went into a trading halt on Friday as the company entered voluntary administration after failing to secure financing, Mining Weekly reported. Sherwin had previously warned shareholders of the need to secure capital in order to fund its short-term and medium-term obligations, with the junior relying on A$10-million cash being held in escrow under its major debt facility, after a share purchase plan and rights issue failed to raise the necessary funding.

Bank of China Ltd. denied a report by the state broadcaster alleging it broke the nation’s foreign-exchange rules by providing services that help clients move “dirty money” abroad, Bloomberg News reported. Reports by China Central Television and other media “contain discrepancies with and misunderstanding of the facts,” the Beijing-based lender said in a statement on its website late yesterday. “References to an ‘underground bank’ and ‘money laundering’ are inconsistent with the facts.” CCTV said Bank of China Ltd. was among lenders that circumvented the foreign-exchange regulations.

China should let more ailing firms go bankrupt to help improve economic mechanisms rather than allow them to get government-led bailouts, a deputy central bank governor said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The risk of corporate failures is rising as economic growth slows and the government tries to put a lid on high debt levels in the economy to help ward off financial risks. "In the course of our surveys, we found that many companies are in the zombie state but they have taken up a large amount of credit," Liu Shiyu told a forum in Beijing.

Further draining a pool of assets that will eventually be distributed to its creditors, defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox has paid $188,763 to Tibanne, its parent company, as a part of its liquidation, The Wall Street Journal reported. A heavily blacked-out application to make the payments, which was submitted by a court-appointed trustee for Mt. Gox, was revealed on a website called goxdox.com. Two people familiar with the matter have confirmed the authenticity of the document filed with the Tokyo District Court in May.