Asia Pacific

Indonesia's commercial court has declared budget carrier Batavia Air bankrupt just months after AirAsia, Southeast Asia's top low-cost airline, aborted a deal to invest in it, officials said Thursday, the Associated Press reported. Agus Iskandar, presiding judge at the Jakarta Commercial Court, said a bankruptcy petition filed by U.S.-based International Lease Finance Corporation was approved on Wednesday after Batavia Air failed to pay a $4.7 million debt that was due Dec. 13. Flights abruptly stopped just after midnight, stranding hundreds of passengers across the country.

Applications for reverse mortgages, which are typically taken out by elderly or retired homeowners who borrow money in the form of monthly payments against the equity in their homes, are surging to the highest in six years. Loans backed by state- run financing firm Korea Housing Finance Corp. jumped 71 percent in 2012 as retirees like Kim sought a steady income in a nation wracked by personal debt, falling home values and a rapidly aging population, Bloomberg reported.

More than 450 workers are not returning to their jobs today, as transport and logistics company Wettenhalls collapsed on Friday afternoon, SmartCompany.au reported. The business has been operating for almost 90 years and has a turnover of approximately $120 million per annum and has 14 sites nationally. BDO administrators Luke Targett, Rachel Burdett-Baker and Dennis Turner have been appointed as voluntary administrators. Independently, Ferrier Hodgson partners Brendan Richards and George Georges were appointed receivers and managers of the Wettenhalls business on Friday, January 25.

Many congratulations to Stephen Fidler, who has managed to get some actual news in Davos: EU economics commissioner Olli Rehn went on the record telling him that Cyprus is going to have to restructure its debt — just two weeks after ruling such a thing out, Seeking Alpha reported. That might come as little surprise, given that Cypriot banks were loaded up to the gills with Greek debt, and Greek debt suffered a 70% haircut.

China’s manufacturing is expanding at the fastest rate in two years, according to a private survey of companies, bolstering prospects that economic growth will accelerate for a second straight quarter. The preliminary reading of a Purchasing Managers’ Index was 51.9 in January, according to a statement from HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics today. That compares with the 51.5 final reading for December and the 51.7 median estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The Bank of Japan appears to have accomplished a tactical masterstroke in giving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe an ambitious inflation target and an "open ended" commitment to buying assets, without expending any of its policy firepower, Reuters reported in an analysis. At least that is financial markets' initial read. Japan's central bankers see it differently; a hard-fought compromise that allowed the Bank of Japan to fend off the most serious threat to its 15-year independence, but which left it obliged to carry out more radical policies in the future.

The 80 shareholders of Australian Sugar Cane Feeds are meeting today after the farming feed and mulch business collapsed, leaving them $13 million in the red, SmartCompany.au reported. ASCF is based on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland and produces a feed product made from sugarcane called Cow Candy and a mulch product called Hydrocane. The business had 12 employees and customers across Asia and Australia.

One of the world's largest leasing firms has warned India the failure of troubled carriers like Kingfisher Airlines to return airplanes when they cannot pay their bills could put the country's aviation growth at risk by scaring away new funding. ILFC, which owns over 900 aircraft and rents them out to airlines for several years at a time, is the latest industry player to clash with the Indian carrier, whose financial difficulties have left its aircraft grounded since October.

The Bank of Japan announced on Tuesday its most determined effort yet to end years of economic stagnation, saying it would switch to an open-ended commitment to buying assets next year and double its inflation target to 2 percent, Reuters reported. It issued a joint statement with the government promising to reach the inflation goal "at the earliest possible time," drawing praise from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has piled relentless pressure on the central bank to take bolder measures to pull Japan out of deflation.

China is losing its competitive edge as a low-cost manufacturing base, new data suggest, with makers of everything from handbags to shirts to basic electronic components relocating to cheaper locales like Southeast Asia, The Wall Street Journal reported. The shift—illustrated in weakened foreign investment in China—has pluses and minuses for an economy key to global growth. Beijing wants to shift to higher-value production and to see incomes rise. But a de-emphasis on manufacturing puts pressure on leaders to make sure jobs are created in other sectors to keep the world's No.