Asia Pacific

Cyprus, the next euro-zone country in line to receive a bailout, has agreed to submit to an independent review of the country's controls on money laundering, in a bid to ease the currency bloc's concerns about lending billions of euros to prop up Cypriot financial institutions, a popular destination for offshore cash, The Wall Street Journal reported. Pumping more capital into Cypriot banks will be a major part of the bailout, which euro-zone finance ministers said after a meeting Monday would be ready by the end of March.

PT Berlian Laju Tanker Tbk, the Indonesian operator of 72 tankers, won't be permitted to proceed in U.S. bankruptcies while keeping all papers sealed and withheld from the public, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein ruled at a hearing, StamfordAdvocate.com reported on a Bloomberg story. Gramercy Distressed Opportunity Fund II along with two sister funds filed an involuntary Chapter 11 petition against the PT Berlian parent in December. The company responded by asking Bernstein to dismiss the involuntary case.

Memory chipmaker Micron said the Tokyo district court issued an order approving its acquisition of Japanese memory chipmaker Elpida after creditors agreed to the plan, Reuters reported. Boise, Idaho-based Micron, which is losing money due to a crumbling PC industry, wants to create larger economies of scale and offered in July to buy Elpida for about $750 million in cash and to pay creditors a total of $1.75 billion in annual installments through 2019. Elpida's creditors voted to approve the deal on Tuesday, Micron said.

For new South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who in her inauguration speech promised a fairer society, one of the biggest challenges will be to tackle a growing income gap that has seen almost one in two elderly South Koreans slip back into poverty, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ms. Park in her speech on Monday alluded to tougher economic times ahead, talking about a new chapter in the economic miracle that lifted many South Koreans out of poverty in the decades of breakneck growth after the Korean War—but deepened inequalities.

Faced with slowing growth, persistent inflation and sagging investor confidence, India’s government is pinned between conflicting pressures: economists warn that tough steps are needed to avoid long-term fiscal problems, even as political leaders are leery of introducing unpopular measures before important elections this year, the International Herald Tribune reported.

Almost half of China’s provinces are setting their growth sights lower in the wake of the central government’s emphasis on the quality of expansion over speed, a sign of an increased focus on tackling rising debt, Bloomberg reported. Fourteen provinces have set lower targets for gross domestic product expansion this year than in 2012 and the other 17 left their goals unchanged, according to Nomura Holdings Inc. The weighted average target has dropped to 9.9 percent from 10.3 percent, Citigroup Inc. calculates.

Last quarter, 7,221 Thai companies closed down, 27 percent higher than in the same period a year earlier, when the worst floods in 70 years swamped most of the country, Bloomberg reported. The figure is also more than double the average of 3,000 in the previous nine years, according to data from the National Economic & Social Development Board. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s government raised the daily minimum wage to 300 baht throughout the country last month, after a similar increase in April in seven provinces including Bangkok.

China will rein in its shadow banking system by requiring banks to provide greater disclosure about their off-balance sheet activities, according to people briefed on the new rules, the Financial Times reported. The Chinese shadow banking system – credit flows beyond traditional bank loans – has quadrupled in size since 2008 to about Rmb20tn ($3.2tn), or 40 per cent of economic output. These flows were crucial in reviving the country’s growth last year. But banking analysts and rating agencies have warned that they pose an increasingly serious risk to Chinese economic stability.

European policymakers are split over how to handle a bailout of Cyprus, with Germany and some other countries pushing for bank depositors to bear part of the cost and many other member states worried such a move will cause a bank run, Reuters reported. Euro zone officials say momentum has built in recent days behind the idea of "bailing-in" Cypriot bank shareholders and depositors, although the specifics of how such an operation would be carried out have not been pinned down.

Receivers have been appointed to Becton Property Group after the company failed to reach an agreement with its consortium of bankers led by Goldman Sachs, The Australian reported. Goldman Sachs and consortium partner Fortress Investment Group have called in two major loans to Becton totalling $200 million. That move has placed the listed headstock Becton Property Group Ltd and associated entities Becton Pty Ltd, Becton Group Holdings Pty and Becton Construction Group Pty Ltd into receivership.