Asia Pacific

Japanese restaurant chain Wagamama has gone into voluntary administration, and its Southbank venue in Melbourne has been shut down, The Age reported. Administrator KPMG took control of the business on Tuesday. Staff at the restaurant chain received news that the company behind Wagamama had gone into administration on Thursday and Friday. KPMG partner and administrator Ian Hall said the Southbank restaurant had been closed soon after the business was taken over. "The reason being was that it was not profitable," he said.

Debt-laden Titan Petrochemicals Group, controlled by partially state-owned fuel and metals trader Guangdong Zhenrong Energy, plans to present a new debt restructuring proposal to creditors to whom it owes more than US$400 million, the South China Morning Post reported. Titan executive director Patrick Wong Siu-hung said the board believed the debt restructuring plan would be "final", but he would not divulge the proposed "hair cut" - or the repayment discount it proposed on amounts owed.

China’s swelling local-government debt is spurring speculation that authorities could sell some of their holdings of listed shares, estimated by UBS AG to total at least 5 trillion yuan ($820 billion), to make repayments, Bloomberg reported. Partial divestment of governments’ stakes in state-owned companies is one option to address the debt issue, said Yao Wei, China economist at Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong. Local governments have already made some sales over the past two years and repayment pressures mean that more are likely, said Chen Li, a Shanghai-based analyst at UBS.

OGX Petróleo e Gas Participações SA, the beleaguered Brazilian oil company controlled by former billionaire Eike Batista, said on Thursday it expects to end up in arbitration over a deal struck with Malaysian state oil company Petronas, Reuters reported. The day after filing for bankruptcy, OGX said in a securities filing that it had struck a deal with Petronas in the middle of this year for which it should have received about 1.9 billion reais ($869 million).

China’s top four banks posted their biggest increase in soured loans since at least 2010 as a five-year credit spree left companies with excess manufacturing capacity and slower profit growth amid an economic slowdown. Nonperforming loans at Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp., Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. and Bank of China Ltd. rose 3.5 percent in the three months to Sept. 30 from June to a combined 329.4 billion yuan ($54 billion), according to data compiled by Bloomberg News based on third-quarter results. Profit rose to 209 billion yuan.

Cyprus' president says he expects international creditors' latest review to approve the country's handling of its bailout program, the Associated Press reported. Cyprus in March got a 10 billion-euro ($13.78 billion) loan to save it from bankruptcy, but in return it had to commit to a series of reforms and measures. Among those, uninsured depositors in the country's two biggest banks were forced to take major losses on their savings. The second-largest bank, Laiki, was shut down and authorities imposed capital controls to prevent a run.

China's Shunfeng Photovoltaic International Ltd has signed a preliminary deal to buy the main China unit of Suntech Power, two sources close to the matter said, Reuters reported. The framework agreement with Wuxi Suntech's administrator brings the closely watched restructuring of the firm's $1.75 billion debt closer to completion after Suntech Power defaulted on a $541 million dollar convertible bond in March.

Adventurewear retailer Snowgum have lurched into voluntary administration following a dispute over rent with a landlord of one of its shops in the face of a general downturn in consumer confidence and tough times in the retail sector, BusinessDay reported. In business since 1926, and selling a range of outdoor clothing with a focus on functional performance fabrics, it operates out of 20 stores.

Solid Energy has secured its restructuring deal with most of its banks and the Government following a series of meetings today in Christchurch, The New Zealand Herald reported. The state owned coal miner said it received "majority support" from its five bank creditors and note holders at the meetings. Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd has not agreed to the deal, but its opposition will not stop it from going ahead. While it had the support of most of its banks, "certain of the arrangements are still subject to legal challenge" Solid Energy said.

Tachikawa Forest Products (NZ), the owner of the Rotorua sawmill tipped into receivership last week, was in breach of its banking covenants for the past two years, and had its 2012 accounts tagged by auditors over a working capital deficit, Scoop.co.nz reported. KordaMentha’s Grant Graham and Brendon Gibson were appointed receivers on Friday, ending the Japanese-owned wood processor’s attempts to regain profitability after successive years of losses that had accumulated to $12.5 million as at Dec. 31.