Asia Pacific

A Perth building company with about $30 million in contracts from the Building the Education Revolution program has fallen into administration, pinning the blame for its financial woes on the West Australian government's mismanagement of the scheme, The Australian reported. Midland Constructions owes its creditors more than $3m and has been forced to halt work at schools in Perth's eastern suburbs and Avon Valley.

The receivers of Australian clothing and footwear retailer Colorado Group have put the businesses up for sale, asking for expressions of interest by April 19, Reuters reported. Colorado Group, owned by Affinity Equity Partners, surrendered control of the business to its lenders last week. It was the second private-equity-owned store chain to do so in Australia in as many months after the collapse of bookstore owner REDGroup. Colorado's lenders, including Mizuho Corporate Bank , National Australia Bank and several hedge funds, are owed about A$400 million ($411.5 million).

Treasury has warned the federal government that the river of company tax revenue that has supported the budget for the past eight years is drying up, with payments falling massively short of budget projections, The Australian reported. A Treasury executive minute to Wayne Swan has blamed the strength of the Australian dollar and the run of Reserve Bank rate rises for the shortfall, and says the government should not expect the minerals boom to bring a quick turnaround.

The Japanese government is considering financial aid to the troubled Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, through an injection of public funds or debt guarantees, a government official said Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported. "Unless the government takes such a step it will be difficult for Tepco'' over time to secure necessary capital, Masayuki Sudo, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said in an interview Friday morning.

Three of the four NZ-registered companies associated with IT services company DataSouth have been placed in liquidation, The National Business Review reported. A fourth, DataSouth Finance is now subject to a Serious Fraud Office investigation, revealed by the agency late Friday. The investigation relates to lease deals with DataSouth Clients, bankrolled by South Canterbury Finance.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's cut Cyprus' government debt grade by one notch on Wednesday and warned it could issue the euro country another downgrade because of the financial system's exposure to debt-saddled Greece, the Associated Press reported. The agency said the Cypriot financial system's "significant" exposure to Greece represented a "ratings weakness." S&P credit analyst Benjamin Young said "the increasing likelihood that the Greek government will restructure its debt" heightened the risk that Cyprus would be impacted negatively.

Princes Wharf developer David Henderson averted bankruptcy this morning to allow him and his creditors time to discuss another proposal that could stop Inland Revenue's application, The New Zealand Herald reported. High Court Associate Judge Jeremy Doogue adjourned IRD's application to bankrupt Henderson to April 19, to allow Henderson's creditors to vote on a new proposal. The meeting is expected to be held within the next 10 working days. IRD lawyer Nick Malarao said the commissioner opposed the adjournment, stating it was in public interest that Henderson be bankrupted.

Philippine central-bank governor Amando Tetangco Jr. said Tuesday that inflation in the country is under control and that the bank might not have to raise interest rates as much as some economists predict to contain the threat, The Wall Street Journal reported. Last Thursday, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas increased its overnight borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point to 4.25%—the first interest-rate move since July 2009—and many analysts expect more rate moves to follow. Some predicted interest rates could increase by a total of one percentage point this year.

Sixteen Hong Kong banks have agreed on a deal to enable investors in structured products of the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers recover a majority of their investments, Reuters reported. Investors in Hong Kong lost nearly $2.5 billion on structured products, called 'minibonds' offered by U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, which collapsed in 2008. A statement from receivers PricewaterhouseCoopers on Sunday said the agreement was to result in most of Lehman's minibond investors recovering over 80 percent of their original investment from the underlying collateral.

A damning internal report by Afghanistan’s own Central Bank depicts the Afghan political elite as using Kabul Bank, the country’s biggest financial institution, as its private piggy bank, the International Herald Tribune reported. The report both raises questions about why the authorities did not act sooner and suggests that the answers lay in the political connections of the bank’s officers and shareholders — the recipients of most of the more than $900 million in loans.