Asia Pacific

The International Monetary Fund warned Thursday it sees increasing risks of a property bubble in Hong Kong due to continued liquidity inflows and rock-bottom interest rates coupled with tight housing supply, and it urged the city's government to take further measures to rein in the booming real-estate market if asset-price inflation continues, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Allied Farmers has fired a broadside at Hanover Finance owners Mark Hotchin and Eric Watson after receivers were appointed today to Matarangi Beach Estates, a Coromandel property development company it acquired in a swap deal with Hanover last December, BusinessDay.co.nz reported. In an announcement to the stock exchange today Allied said it had been unable to strike a deal with lender HSBC, owed $19 million by Matarangi Beach Estates, and had therefore appointed receiver Korda Mentha.

India’s rapidly growing private microcredit industry faces imminent collapse as almost all borrowers in one of India’s largest states have stopped repaying their loans, egged on by politicians who accuse the industry of earning outsize profits on the backs of the poor, the International Herald Tribune reported. The crisis has been building for weeks, but has now reached a critical stage.

The threat of receivership continues to hang over the Beaconsfield goldmine in Tasmania and its owner, BCD Resources. But fresh hope that BCD can secure new finance has emerged, prompting its major secured creditor, Minemakers, to give the company more time to secure enough funds to keep operating, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. BCD has told Minemakers it has received letters of commitment from several parties prepared to advance it funds. Minemakers has agreed to a 48-hour standstill arrangement.

The last-minute transfer of millions in cash from Australia to New Zealand has contributed to huge losses for investors in an Australian arm of Bridgecorp, BusinessDay.co.nz reported. But another questionable loan transaction between the two may have left New Zealand investors with the worst part of the deal. Receivers of Bridgecorp Finance told debenture investors this month they will get just A5.6 cents in the dollar after the company's high risk property lending, particularly to developments by former Australian test cricketer Craig McDermott, proved unrecoverable.

Japan Airlines Corp said Monday it will terminate the employment contracts of up to 250 pilots and cabin attendants after its additional voluntary retirement program failed to meet its job reduction target, Japan Today reported. The decision by JAL, which is restructuring under court protection, and its bankruptcy administrator, the state-backed Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp of Japan, comes as the airline is aiming to obtain court approval for its restructuring plans by the end of this month.

The Beaconsfield Gold Mine in northern Tasmania has until 5pm today to find another joint venture partner or face liquidation, ABC News reported. The mine is on the brink of receivership for the second time in a month. BCD Resources, formerly Beaconsfield Gold, first struck trouble, when a merger with Bendigo Mining failed. Perth-based Minemakers Limited bailed them out with a loan of up to $15 million. So far Minemakers has given them $8.5 million, but Managing Director Andrew Drummond now says the Beaconsfield mine is losing money too quickly.

China's biggest auto maker is close to finalizing a plan to buy a stake in General Motors Co., which is preparing for an initial public offering next week, according to people familiar with the discussions, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. SAIC Motor Corp., which has built cars with GM in China since the 1990s, is among foreign entities that will become part owners of GM when the auto maker returns to the public markets, these people said. A final decision could come within the next couple of days.

Allied Farmers, which took on the Hanover and United loan books in a failed bid to become a major lender, faces losing another $7 million after HSBC pulled the credit line on one of the firm's subsidiaries, ShareChat.co.nz reported. The Hong Kong-based lender called its $19 million loan facility to Matarangi Beach Estates after Allied refused to put up the same guarantee as the previous owners, Eric Watson and Mark Hotchin, who had poured the vehicle into Hanover to try to keep it afloat.

Vietnam's legislature has rejected a lawmaker's rare call to investigate senior government leaders in a scandal involving a state-run shipbuilder that resulted in billions of dollars of debt, state media reported Friday. The National Assembly, dominated by lawmakers from the ruling Communist Party, has long been considered a rubber stamp and has never called for an investigation of the government, but has recently become increasingly vocal about the government's performance.