Asia Pacific

Creditors for the parent company of collapsed discount store chain Chickenfeed are waiting to retrieve tens of millions of dollars, as lengthy proceedings to recover the funds are still in the early stages, The Examiner reported. Retail Adventures, owned by Tasmanian businesswoman Jan Cameron, was Australia's largest discount variety store operator but went into liquidation in February. Liquidators are now pursuing more than $100 million from Ms Cameron for insolvent trading, preferential payments and an invalid loan.

Mt. Gox customers with frozen bitcoin accounts are targeting Chief Executive Mark Karpeles, arguing in court papers he is unfit to lead the Japanese bitcoin exchange through its U.S. bankruptcy case, The Wall Street Journal reported. In papers filed Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas, lawyers for several Mt. Gox customers pointed out Mr. Karpeles has been accused of fraud and said he should no longer have power over Mt. Gox's U.S. assets in his official role as Mt. Gox Co.'s foreign representative.

Facing a growing problem of debt defaults, the Chinese government should deploy 100 billion to 200 billion yuan ($16 billion to $32 billion) this year to help restructure indebted companies, a former adviser to the central bank said Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported. "In the second half of the year, the government should promote debt restructuring in certain sectors," economist Li Daokui said at a news briefing, adding that the funds should be taken from the budget.

A group of investors seeking to buy Mt. Gox has launched a website to garner support from creditors of the bankrupt bitcoin exchange to prevent a liquidation of its assets, Reuters reported. "We need your help to stop a liquidation, which would be good neither for Mt. Gox creditors nor bitcoin's reputation with the general public and regulators," the investors wrote on the website. Mt. Gox, once the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, is likely to be liquidated after a Tokyo court dismissed the company's bid to resuscitate its business, the court appointed administrator said on Wednesday.

MtGox, once the biggest bitcoin exchange in the world, is likely to be liquidated after a Japanese court denied it bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, The Guardian reported. The company's assets will be sold off and used to pay its creditors, including those with accounts on the site. But any creditor will now recoup less than their initial stake, although it remains to be seen how much the infrastructure of the firm, as well as intellectual property including the MtGox brand, is worth.

China's biggest airline by revenue warned it expects to report a first-quarter net loss, the first sign that the recent weakening of the nation's currency is impacting a major industry, The Wall Street Journal reported. China Southern Airlines Co. said late Tuesday it will likely post a net loss of between 300 million yuan ($48.2 million) and 350 million yuan for the quarter through March due to foreign exchange losses. In the same quarter last year, it posted a net profit of 57 million yuan.

Japan’s population slid for a third year with the proportion of people over the age of 65 rising to a record, underscoring the challenge the world’s most-indebted economy faces in financing its aging society, Bloomberg News reported. The population declined by 0.17 percent to 127.3 million as of Oct. 1, as the country maintains one of the world’s lowest birth rate. People age 65 or older made up one fourth of the total, the highest-ever percentage, as postwar baby boomers head into retirement, the Internal Affairs Ministry said on its website yesterday.

In the past two months, China has suffered its first domestic bond default in recent history and a series of small bankruptcies that have some investors fretting the country could face its very own “Lehman moment”, the Financial Times reported. But behind the lurid headlines and fear of financial panic, something more complicated is happening. These systemically insignificant financial failures are being hyped up by China’s state-controlled media – and then unwittingly amplified by the international press – as part of a campaign of government-sanctioned “Potemkin defaults”.

China’s banking regulator ordered owners of the nation’s 68 trust companies to be prepared to provide funding or sell their stakes as the risk of defaults rises in the $1.9 trillion industry for high-yield investment. The China Banking Regulatory Commission told trust companies to either restrict their businesses and reduce net assets or have shareholders replenish capital when the firms suffer losses, according to an April 8 notice that was seen by Bloomberg News.

For a bunch of people who just agreed the global economy is doing better, top officials from the world's rich and poor nations sound rather worried. For poor nations, the easy monetary policies in advanced economies are leading to big swings in capital flows that could destabilize emerging markets. For rich countries, the hoarding of currency by developing nations is blocking progress toward a more stable global economy.