Asia Pacific

In a marathon six-hour session, more than 9,000 shareholders of embattled Tokyo Electric Power grilled management over alleged failures in handling the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in northern Japan, but refused to back a proposal demanding an end to the utility's use of nuclear power, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported.

Years ago, when Industrial & Commercial Bank of China was getting ready to list, it went through its own spring cleaning of its balance sheet, The Globe and Mail reported on a Financial Times story. It established Huarong Asset Management, a platform to take all its bad debts, while the Ministry of Finance recapitalized the bank itself. Today, Huarong has re-invented itself as a nonbank financial institution.

The receiver of failed lender St Laurence says investors will probably get a return at the lower end of its forecast range, and is working towards making a second repayment in August, BusinessDay reported. Receivers Barry Jordan and David Vance of Deloitte expect investors will get a return at the lower end of 15 per cent to 22 per cent range on secured debenture holders' principal, according to their latest report. They said they want to make a second payment in August, with a third and final distribution next year. Debenture holders were paid 9 cents in the dollar in January.

The Crafar family have reached a truce with receivers, nearly two years after the collapse of their farming empire, The New Zealand Herald reported. And they say they remain hopeful the Government will reject the latest Chinese bid for 13 dairy farms and three drystock farms they formerly owned in the central North Island. Receivers KordaMentha took control of the farms in October 2009 after the Crafar family companies running them accumulated debts of more than $200 million. KordaMentha receiver Brendon Gibson yesterday confirmed a settlement had been reached.

Korea will come up with tighter lending regulations on banks to try and rein in household debt, the head of the nation’s financial watchdog said Thursday, The Korea Times reported. “The financial watchdog will seek to stem excessive growth of household debt and make efforts to amend its structure to soften the impacts of rate hikes,” Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) Governor Kwon Hyouk-se said in a forum held at the National Assembly.

The Serious Fraud Office has dropped its investigation into Mutual Finance and Viaduct Capital and handed information to the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) to consider, The National Business Review reported. Mutual Finance operated in its final days under the Crown Retail Deposit Guarantee scheme. When it collapsed into receivership last July, it owed 450 investors about $17 million. Related property financier, Viaduct Capital, was put into receivership in May 2010 owing 110 depositors $7.8 million.

The receiver of Lombard Finance & Investments is at loggerheads with the Inland Revenue Department over a $4.5 million tax bill relating to the sale of a building before the failed lender was wound up, Business Day reported. PricewaterhouseCoopers' John Fisk said the transaction pre-dated the receivership and involved a property being sold to a purchaser financed by Lombard. The tax department is claiming the transaction was a mortgagee sale, which means the tax liability would remain with Lombard. "The evidence we have and the tax advice we've had clearly has the seller as a borrower.

Hanover Finance's loan to Fijian resort Vatulele has proved disastrous for Allied Farmers with ASB Bank calling in the receivers, The New Zealand Herald reported. The multimillion-dollar loan on the resort, a popular winter destination for New Zealanders and Australians, has been in default for more than two years. ASB, which lent to the project, pulled the plug last week. An Allied Farmers subsidiary is the second secured lender after ASB.

Liquidators have been unable to recover any money following the failed multimillion-dollar Walter Peak development, Business Day reported on a Southland Times story. Roderick Nielsen, his brother Greg and another director, Justin Russell, of London, were behind several developments in Queenstown, including the planned $50million Walter Peak project. Rod Nielsen, who bought Walter Peak land for $10m in 2006 and planned to build a luxury lodge, homesteads and cottages, was adjudicated bankrupt in 2009. The company is in liquidation and receivership.

The Afghan government will struggle to pay its bills "within a month" after the International Monetary Fund rejected proposals for resolving the Kabul Bank scandal, western officials have warned, The Guardian reported. Although the war-torn country's biggest bank nearly collapsed last September, the government of Hamid Karzai and the international community are still at loggerheads over plans to fund an $820m (£507m) bailout as well as how the disgraced former managers and shareholders who helped themselves to hundreds of millions of dollars should be prosecuted.