Asia Pacific

As China Cosco Holdings Co. prepares yet another earnings report awash in red, voices inside and outside are pushing China's champion of the world's shipping lanes to shore up its finances, The Wall Street Journal reported. Cosco is in little danger of collapse. More than half its stock is controlled by the Chinese government, which sees the shipping company as a major part of a national effort to gain greater sway over vital global supply chains.

Hanwha Group’s bid to buy the insolvent German manufacturer Q-Cells SE drew a competing approach from a Spanish power-plant builder that also wants to own what was once the biggest solar-cell maker, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. Isofoton SA was approved to bid for Q-Cells after Chief Executive Officer Angel Luis Serrano met with the German company’s insolvency administrator Henning Schorisch today, according to an e-mailed statement from Isofoton. Serrano will present the bid, to be made with a U.S. investor it didn’t identify, to Q-Cells’ creditors at an Aug. 29 meeting, it said.

South Korea's Hanwha Corp intends to buy solar Group Q-Cells, the insolvent German group said in a statement on Sunday, Reuters reported. Hanwha and Q-Cells' insolvency administrator Henning Schorisch had signed a contract, which needs to be approved by a creditors' meeting to be held on Aug. 29. Q-Cells, once the world's largest maker of solar cells, said Hanwha would take on liabilities, which amount to "the low hundreds of millions." In addition it would pay a "medium double-digit million-euro range" in cash," Q-cells said in the statement.

Australian Music Group Holdings (AMG), which trades as Billy Hyde and Allans, has been placed into receivership by one of its creditors. James Stewart and Brendan Richards from Ferrier Hodgson were appointed as administrators Thursday morning by Revere Capital, a group of private investors owed around $27 million by AMG, and immediately placed the retailer into receivership. Unsecured creditors are owed around $13.5 million, while employee entitlements are estimated at $3 million.

China's four biggest banks, which rank among the world's most prolific lenders, are set to report first-half earnings, and investors are likely to gauge their health not by their profits but by how fast their loans are turning sour, The Wall Street Journal reported. Signs of rising bad debt, a key measure of how Chinese companies are faring amid the slowest growth since the financial crisis in 2008, already have pushed the shares of the four state-controlled banks down an average 19% from their highs this year in February.

Failed Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc, which has agreed to be bought by U.S. rival Micron Technology Inc, said on Tuesday it had submitted a restructuring plan to the Tokyo District Court, the next step in efforts to ensure the survival of some of its operations, Reuters reported. Micron agreed in early July to buy Elpida for about $750 million in cash and pay creditors a total of $1.75 billion in annual instalments through 2019. A group of Elpida bondholders said Micron is offering too little for the chipmaker. Elpida did not elaborate the content of the plan.

When Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, announced this year’s annual growth target of 7.5 per cent in March, most analysts assumed he was being unduly modest and that the world’s second-largest economy would actually expand much faster, the Financial Times reported. The Chinese economy has consistently outperformed annual targets over the past decade, averaging close to 11 per cent growth over that time, despite the 2008-09 global financial crisis. But with activity cooling much more than expected in recent months the 7.5 per cent target is starting to look ambitious.

Indian drugmaker Wockhardt is proving there is life after debt restructuring. After defaulting on $110 million in overseas bonds in 2009 and renegotiating payment on 13 billion rupees in loans, the generics maker is nearly free from a sometimes bitter process of debt recast and is enjoying a furious stock rally, Reuters reported. While Wockhardt's imminent emergence from India's corporate debt restructuring (CDR) system is widely seen as a turnaround success, it comes as the central bank pushes for tighter rules around the process as more companies take advantage of it.

Elpida Memory Inc . bondholders have filed a bankruptcy exit plan that values the company at $3.85 billion, well over the price rival Micron Technology Inc . has offered to pay for the distressed chip maker, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Bankruptcy trustees overseeing Elpida's restructuring agreed to Micron's $2.5 billion offer. Micron's bid is expected to be embodied in a bankruptcy exit plan the trustees will file next week in Tokyo District Court.

Shareholders of troubled timber firm Sino-Forest Corp. would receive nothing under a proposed restructuring plan that would transfer remaining assets to creditors, thestar.com reported. A once-mighty company with a market capitalization of $6 billion, Sino Forest is now in tatters as its former executives face fraud accusations that include overstating assets and sales in China. Sino-Forest says it is owed $887.4 million from authorized intermediaries, who operated on its behalf in China.