Asia Pacific

After years of housing prices gone wild, China's property bubble is starting to deflate, The Wall Street Journal reported. Residential prices are heading downward in some major cities, damping some undesired real-estate speculation but raising the prospect that the Chinese economy may slow more rapidly than anticipated with profound consequences for global growth. Real estate is a foundation of China's phenomenal growth record in the past two decades, and its health is crucial to China's construction, steel and cement sectors.

The Bank of Korea will weigh an interest-rate increase tomorrow as swelling household debt and weakness in the global economy pose threats to growth, Bloomberg reported. Nine of 17 economists expect the benchmark rate will stay unchanged at 3 percent, while eight forecast an increase of a quarter of a percentage point, a Bloomberg News survey shows. Officials must decide whether protecting the nation’s expansion is more important than taming inflation that’s exceeded a 4 percent target ceiling each month this year.

Hong Kong banks may have succeeded where the government failed as rising mortgage rates curb home price gains and cut sales to the lowest level in two years, signaling the property market may have peaked, Bloomberg reported. HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), which controls two of the city’s three- biggest banks by customers, is among lenders that accelerated mortgage rate increases in April as liquidity dried up.

Indian tycoon Pankaj Oswal has been blocked in an attempt to gain access to key documents related to the looming $1 billion sale of his controlling stake in Australia's biggest ammonia producer, Burrup Fertilisers, The Australian reported. Federal Court judge Michael Barker ruled yesterday that Mr Oswal, who left Australia last December as the ANZ Bank put Burrup Fertilisers into receivership, could not see the documents even though he remains a director of the company.

Overseas buyers are lining up to take control of one of the largest online exporters of NZ-made consumer goods after the company was tipped into liquidation, Business Day reported. New Zealand Global Ltd, which sells a wide range of locally made products to consumers around the world via its shopnewzealand.co.nz website, has been put on the market by liquidator Gareth Hoole of Staples Rodway, who said he hoped to have a sale finalised as early as this week. Hoole said a number of potential buyers had shown interest in the business and most were based in China or Malaysia.

The federal government has promised significant regulatory reform of the insolvency industry but has rejected a Senate committee's recommendation to strip the Australian Securities & Investments Commission of its powers and create a single industry regulator, The Australian reported. A 120-page options paper for reform was unveiled yesterday by David Bradbury, parliamentary secretary to the Treasurer. The paper canvasses an overhaul of the profession's regulatory architecture to address concerns about misconduct and to improve value for money.

The federal government gave almost $300,000 worth of BER funding to private schools that rented their buildings, but went broke and were forced to close, The Australian reported. The Victorian Department of Education is now trying to recover $285,326 of schools building stimulus program money from two private schools that were operated in the state by Independent Colleges Australia. The colleges in Melton and Casey, connected to the bankrupt ABC Learning childcare group, went into voluntary administration last November after it could not pay its landlord.

China’s plan to rein in property prices with a record homebuilding program may worsen local debt risks even as it proves a boon to companies from domestic cement makers to Chilean copper exporters, Bloomberg reported. Premier Wen Jiabao aims to build 36 million low-cost homes by 2015, an initiative that will see 2 trillion yuan ($307 billion) added to local government borrowing by 2012, bringing it to a total 12 trillion yuan, Standard Chartered Plc estimates. The surge of loans by banks to local authorities may spark a wave of bank failures that hobble economic growth.

Creditors of Rolleston-based bus-maker Design Line were successful in placing the company into liquidation today, The National Business Review reported. Two creditors – Lyasight and ENI Engineering –advertised the liquidation petitions. The company had obtained several delays to allow it time to find purchasers but to no avail. The overall debt is estimated as around $10 million. The company makes buses that are used in many countries. It employs about 500 people.

China's regulators plan to shift 2-3 trillion yuan (£268-404 billion pounds) of debt off local governments, sources said, reducing the risk of a wave of defaults that would threaten the stability of the world's second-biggest economy, Reuters reported. The plan is the first concrete move by the government to tackle the bad debt in local government financing vehicles. It could boost investor confidence in Chinese banks, which provided many of their loans as part of the massive economic stimulus programme launched by Beijing in late 2008 to counter the global financial crisis.