Asia Pacific

U.S. hedge fund Elliott Advisers LP is suing Vietnamese state-run shipbuilder Vinashin in the U.K. High Court, according to a filing seen by The Wall Street Journal. Vinashin defaulted on a $600 million syndicated loan last December, when the first repayment of $60 million was due. Other investors in the loan, which was arranged by Credit Suisse AG in 2007, include Dublin-based Depfa Bank PLC and Malayan Banking Bhd., as well as Credit Suisse.

China’s shrinking trade surplus and the weakest export growth since 2009 may encourage Premier Wen Jiabao to keep cutting banks’ reserve requirements to sustain expansion in the world’s second-biggest economy, Bloomberg reported. Overseas shipments rose 13.8 percent in November from a year earlier, according to customs data released Dec. 10 in Beijing. The excess of exports over imports fell by 35 percent. A smaller trade surplus and signs that capital has started to flow out of the country may encourage the ruling Communist Party to add to a Nov.

Banks have no plans to carry out a second round of debt restructuring of the ailing Kingfisher Airlines which has an outstanding loan of around Rs 6,419 crore, Parliament was informed Sunday, The Economic Times reported. "State Bank of India, leader of the consortium (of 11 lenders to Kingfisher), has stated that at present, there is no plan," Minister of State for Finance Namo Narain Meena said in a written reply in Lok Sabha. He was replying to a question on whether lenders are planning to carry out a second round of restructuring of loans to help Kingfisher.

The International Monetary Fund's top banking official, assessing the strength of China's financial system, said Chinese regulators need to improve the data they use to assess whether their banks could withstand a sudden economic downturn, and also should better explain what level of capital banks need to hold. "There are important constraints and gaps in the available data" for stress tests of China's banks, said José Viñals, the IMF's director of monetary and capital markets, in written responses Sunday to questions from The Wall Street Journal.

Insolvency experts are welcoming a Court of Appeal decision they say gives comfort to firms trading with a company in receivership, Stuff.co.nz reported. The wisdom of continuing to do business with a troubled entity was called into question by a dispute between the receivers of pet food manufacturer Lovitt's and packaging company Huhtamaki New Zealand. Huhtamaki claims it is $280,000 out of pocket after receivers Deloitte ordered ongoing supplies but then said there were no available funds to pay for them.

BTA Bank may ask the Kazakh government to back its second debt restructuring or provide additional state funds to help avert bankruptcy, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg reported. BTA may seek a capital injection of more than $4 billion, said the people, who declined to be identified because the information isn’t public. Lazard Freres & Co., which acted as an adviser to BTA during its debt reorganization in 2009, assessed the cost of another restructuring last month, the people said.

Saab's Dutch owner and China's Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile have agreed that the Bank of China , the nation's fourth-largest bank by market value, will come in as part owner of the ailing carmaker, according to a source familiar with the deal, Reuters reported. Under the new deal, the Bank of China will replace Chinese investor Pang Da Automobile Trade Co. Youngman and the Bank of China will own just under 50 percent of the company. The move could help pave the way for an approval by General Motors , which still has preferential shares in Saab and rejected an earlier rescue plan.

The world's major central banks acted jointly on Wednesday to provide cheaper dollar funding to European banks facing a credit crunch as the euro zone's debt crisis drove EU ministers to urge more IMF help to avert financial disaster, Reuters reported. The emergency move by the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the central banks of Japan, Britain, Canada and Switzerland recalled coordinated action to stabilise global markets in the 2008 financial crisis after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

China’s central bank, in a surprise move on Wednesday, shifted its economic focus from fighting inflation to stimulating growth by freeing the nation’s commercial banks to lend more money, the International Herald Tribune reported. The bank’s move was separate from the subsequent announcement by central bankers in the United States, Europe and Japan that they would pump more dollars into the European banking system. And Western officials said Beijing’s move was not done in coordination with theirs.

ANZ National Bank, the country's biggest lender, is seeking to recover $25.2 million from the sale of bankrupt Wellington property developer Terry Serepisos' former headquarters, The New Zealand Herald reported. Receivers for Century City Investments, Barry Jordan and David Vance, who were appointed by the bank on Sept. 30, have put ASB Bank Tower up for sale in a public tender being jointly managed by Colliers International and CBRE.