Asia Pacific

Malaysian Airline System Bhd and its key stakeholders are in talks with banks for a strategic overhaul that could include the partial sale of its engineering unit and an upgrade of its ageing fleet, sources involved in the discussions said. Even before the loss of its flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 there was talk that loss-making MAS might need a financial rescue from state investor Khazanah Nasional Bhd, which owns 69 percent of the company. "They are sending all these feelers to banks to try and test the waters," said a banking source familiar with the situation.

The war on those stashing undisclosed money offshore intensified this week when 47 countries, including the Group of 20 and some prominent tax havens, sealed a pact that will shake up the sharing of tax information, The Economist reported. Under the present system, countries have to file requests with each other for data on suspected cheats. Even reasonable enquiries are often rejected as “fishing expeditions”. In future the signatories—and dozens of others that will be pressed into joining later—will automatically exchange information once a year.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said the nation needs to adapt to a “new normal” in the pace of economic growth and remain “cool-minded” amid a slowdown that analysts forecast will lead to the weakest expansion since 1990. China’s growth fundamentals haven’t changed and the country is still in a “significant period of strategic opportunity,” Xi said, according to a Xinhua News Agency report on the central government website on May 10. At the same time, the government must prevent risks and take “timely countermeasures to reduce potential negative effects,” he said.

Workers for one the major contractors constructing Canberra's Majura Parkway have been stood down as the company enters voluntary administration, ABC News reported. Earthmoving works by Hewatt stopped on the $288 million road project on Wednesday after negotiations with lead contractor Fulton Hogan failed. About 200 workers met with voluntary administrators PPB Advisory this morning at another of Hewatt's worksites, the Horse Park Drive extension at Gungahlin.

China's central bank said it would strengthen monitoring of default risk from loans to the property sector, local-government financing companies and industries struggling with overcapacity, The Wall Street Journal reported. In its first-quarter monetary report, the People's Bank of China said Tuesday that it would aim to prevent these risks from spreading more widely through the financial sector. Several smaller property developers have defaulted on loans in recent months amid slower growth in the housing market and the economy overall.

China’s great real-estate bust has begun, says Nomura. A combination of a huge oversupply of housing and a shortage of developer financing is producing a housing market downturn that could drive China’s GDP to less than 6% this year, The Wall Street Journal Real Time China blog reported. “To us, it is no longer a question of ‘if’ but rather ‘how severe’ the property market correction will be,” three Nomura analysts wrote in a report released Monday. And there isn’t much the government can do to head off problems.

Suzlon Energy Ltd, the world’s fifth largest wind turbine maker, announced on Saturday a cash-less restructuring of its existing foreign currency convertible bonds (FCCBs) worth $485 million for five years, after nearly two years of complex negotiations with bondholders, Livemint.com reported. The Pune-based company has four different series of FCCBs issued to investors. Suzlon had failed to repay $209 million of debt on 11 October 2012 after bondholders rejected its request for a four-month extension. The default was the biggest on convertible bonds by an Indian firm.

Workers at Yue Yuen Industrial, which makes running shoes for Nike and Adidas at a big factory complex in Gaobu, said it underpaid their pensions for years, the Financial Times reported. After 11 days of protest, the Dongguan municipal government handed them a rare victory by saying the company should have based contributions on a higher pay level. Yue Yuen estimates that it will have to pay an additional $31m just this year after agreeing to base pension payments on workers’ total pay, including overtime.

Australians need to share the burden of reducing the country’s debt in a budget due May 13, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, after an opinion poll found most voters think he’s broken a promise on tax, Bloomberg News reported. “A strong budget is the foundation for a strong country” and Australians need to “chip away” at public debt, Abbott said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. A temporary levy increasing the top rate of income tax would be a broken promise, said 72 percent of people in a Galaxy poll for the Sunday Telegraph newspaper yesterday.

Corporate receivers Ferrier Hodgson are trying to sell off the assets of collapsed Melbourne internet service provider ispONE for the second time in less than a year, after the remaining subsidiaries entered voluntary administration on Friday, The Australian Financial Review reported.