Asia Pacific

A debt-laden Spanish construction firm became the latest European company to unload assets onto eager Chinese buyers, as Europe's debt woes force firms to look to China for cash, The Wall Street Journal reported. State Grid Corp., China's government controlled power-grid operator, said Tuesday it would buy high-voltage electricity transmission assets in Brazil from Spain's Actividades de Construccion y Servicios SA for 1.86 billion reais ($938.2 million), including debt.

A massive restructuring of debt in India's ailing textile sector will likely provide relief to thousands of mills struggling with losses and revive demand for cotton in the world's second-largest producer, industry officials said Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Some of China's biggest banks have cut off a handful of their European counterparts from borrowing and derivatives trading as they seek to reduce their exposure to the simmering crisis on the Continent, people familiar with the matter said, The Wall Street Journal reported. Chinese state-owned banks including Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., Bank of China Ltd. and Bank of Communications Co.

Two of Japan's biggest corporate wipeouts of the past decade are expected to emerge from bankruptcy in the coming months. Yet the resurrections of Ashikaga Holdings Co. and Japan Airlines Co. stand in contrast, The Wall Street Journal reported. Lender Ashikaga is a classic "zombie company," taking nearly a decade to return to life on the stock market. JAL, on the other hand, will return less than three years after it became the biggest collapse ever by a nonfinancial-services company in Japan.

The 6,000 customers of MF Global Holdings Ltd's Singapore arm should get well over 90 percent of their money back from the collapsed brokerage, although its creditors may have a tougher time recovering all they are due, Reuters reported. MF Global filed for bankruptcy in the United States on Oct 31, 2011 after a $6.3 billion bet on European sovereign debt spooked counterparties and investors.

Struggling lender Dexia SA said it is in exclusive talks to sell its Turkish Denizbank AS unit to Russia's biggest bank, OAO Sberbank, as the Belgian-French bank continues to sell assets to shore up its balance sheet, The Wall Street Journal reported. No financial information was disclosed, but a person familiar with the talks said a deal could be worth between $3 billion and $4 billion and be "the biggest in Sberbank's history." The details are to be ironed out in the next two weeks, the person added. State-controlled Sberbank is Russia's oldest and largest bank.

Chinese shipper Sinotrans Ltd. said Wednesday that the board of Grandstar Cargo International Airlines, a freight forwarder jointly owned by a unit of Sinotrans and Korean Air Lines Co., has approved plans to liquidate the carrier amid mounting losses and lackluster prospects in the air-freight market, The Wall Street Journal reported. Sinotrans said Grandstar Airlines, which has already suspended flight operations, had a net loss of 340.1 million yuan dollars ($53.8 million) in 2011, widening from losses of 20.7 million yuan in 2010 and 94.3 million yuan in 2009.

Sino-Forest Corp said on Wednesday it is reviewing fraud charges leveled against it by the Ontario Securities Commission and considering what steps, if any, it ought to take in response to the allegations, Reuters reported. The embattled Chinese forestry company, whose stock imploded last year in the face of fraud allegations, said the regulator is seeking penalties of up to C$1 million for each alleged failure by the company to comply with Ontario securities law. The OSC, Canada's most powerful securities regulator, is also seeking to permanently halt trade in shares of Sino-Forest.

Canada's largest securities regulator alleged Tuesday that Sino-Forest Corp. and certain former executives inflated timber purchases and sales, capping an 11-month investigation into the troubled forest-products company, The Wall Street Journal Deals & Deal Makers blog reported. The Ontario Securities Commission signaled last month it would file fraud allegations against the company, after issuing a so-called enforcement notice. A spokesman for Sino-Forest, which conducts most of its business in China, declined to comment.

India's mounting economic and political woes are prompting market players to raise the specter of a Greek-style crisis in Asia's third largest economy, Reuters reported on an International Financing Review story. This is not simply idle speculation. Last Friday, the rupee crashed to an all-time low against the dollar of 54.9 and it was stuck most of Tuesday at the psychologically significant Rs55/USD level, where the currency is seen as having no obvious technical support. And the implications of a rupee collapse would be immense.