Asia Pacific

The receivers for South Canterbury Finance have nearly finished their work and say they have recovered more than $770 million of the $1.58 billion the company owed, Radio New Zealand reported. South Canterbury Finance was placed in receivership in August 2010. The latest report from receivers Kerry Downey and William Black states all assets from the company have been realised. The receivers' report says all preferential creditors have been paid out in full, but unsecured creditors and shareholders probably won't get anything.

Cypriots braced on Sunday for the introduction of strict controls on withdrawing and transferring money from their bank accounts as their president made a last-ditch attempt in Brussels to secure an international bailout to spare the country from a chaotic bankruptcy, the Financial Times reported. The capital controls are expected to be in place on Tuesday morning to prevent a run on the island’s banks if and when they reopen after a 10-day closure that has brought the Cypriot economy to a standstill.

Cyprus, in an 11th-hour bid to unlock international aid, reopen the nation's banking system and preserve membership in the euro, readied a plan that would restructure its second-largest lender and enforce unprecedented restrictions on financial transactions, The Wall Street Journal reported. The proposals, if they take effect, would allow authorities to restrict noncash transactions, curtail check cashing, limit withdrawals and even convert checking accounts into fixed-term deposits when banks reopen. They have been closed since March 16.

The local government in Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd's home town is seeking to bail out China's biggest solar panel maker to stave off its collapse, a person with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Thursday. One proposal under consideration is allowing Wuxi Guolian, the local government's investment arm, to take over Suntech's Wuxi business through a restructuring, and test a bankruptcy law introduced in 2007. "Production has to continue," said the source in the city of Wuxi, where Suntech's headquarters are located.

A US bankruptcy judge has approved a $US45 million ($43.3m) settlement between Lehman Brothers Holdings' Australian unit and a group of insurers over claims the bank misled a group of councils, charities and churches into buying risky securities backed by US mortgages, The Australian reported. Judge James Peck, of the US Bankruptcy Court in New York, yesterday signed off the settlement between 10 US insurance companies and the liquidators of Lehman Brothers Australia to settle the matter over collateralised debt obligations, or CDOs.

Cyprus has thrown its international reputation as an offshore banking hub into peril after considering a bold plan to levy a one-time tax on deposits, The Wall Street Journal reported. The proposed tax—which would have helped Cyprus raise funds as part of a €10 billion ($13 billion) bailout deal from the European Union and International Monetary Fund—was rejected by Cyprus's Parliament on Tuesday. Cyprus is now scrambling to find other ways to raise the funds. Still, much of the damage appears to have been done. The tax proposal provoked outrage in Moscow.

Suntech Power, a Chinese manufacturer that became the world’s largest producer of solar panels by 2011 only to be battered by plummeting prices, announced on Wednesday evening that its main operating subsidiary had been pushed into bankruptcy by eight Chinese banks, the International Herald Tribune reported. Suntech was the Icarus of the solar panel industry, with production that soared year after year on heavy investment, as Western investors bought up its New York-traded shares and its international debt issues.

Cyprus on Wednesday was left with narrowing options to rescue its outsize financial-services sector from collapse—something that could end its membership in the euro zone—after international lenders rejected an alternative government plan to secure a €10 billion ($12.93 billion) bailout and Russian officials remained cool to a Cypriot gas-for-cash deal, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Voluntary administrators have been called in by the Australian fund manager in charge of a giant mortgage fund frozen since 2009 with the savings of many New Zealand investors trapped in it, Stuff.co.nz reported. The directors of LM Investment Management appointed John Park and Ginette Muller of FTI Consulting as voluntary administrators, saying the move was forced on it as a result of a smear campaign against it. LM was set up by Kiwi ex-pat businessman Peter Drake but after growing rapidly it hit trouble following the Global Financial Crisis as many of its property loans defaulted.

Cyprus’s finance minister arrived in Moscow on Tuesday night to try to wrest vital economic assistance from the Kremlin as his country’s parliament rejected a €10bn EU-led bailout that requires €5.8bn to be seized from Cypriot bank accounts, the Financial Times reported. The 11th-hour attempt to tap funds from Russia as an alternative to the deposit levy stunned leaders in Brussels, who said they were taken aback by the resistance of Cypriot lawmakers to shifting the tax’s burden exclusively on to deposits over €100,000 – many of which are held by wealthy Russians.