Asia Pacific

Nakheel, a troubled Dubai-based developer, has paid Dh2.5bn ($681m) to trade creditors as it pushes towards agreement on Dh4bn in unpaid bills to contactors as part of the broader restructuring at Dubai World, its parent, the Financial Times reported. Ali Lootah, Nakheel’s chairman, told a local newspaper on Sunday that the developer had agreed claims with 80 per cent of its trade creditors as it pushes towards the 95 per cent threshold needed to finalise a restructuring agreement.

Allied Nationwide Finance says it missed paying maturing debentures yesterday and needs more time to remedy breaches of its trust deed, The National Business Review reported. The finance company said it expected to make good its investor payments today but needed an extension to a 14-day deadline set by Guardian Trust (NZGT) to comply with financial ratios. The deadline expired last night. Until yesterday, Allied Nationwide had continued to meet its obligations, including repayment of maturing debentures, the company said.

Pakistan is to ask the International Monetary Fund to ease restrictions on a $10bn loan it received in 2008 after concluding that the recent devastating floods had made the conditions attached to the lending programme impossible to meet, the Financial Times reported. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Pakistan’s finance minister, will travel to Washington next week to ask the IMF to restructure the current loan or consider new financing, according to Pakistani officials.

A proposed direct factory outlet at Hobart Airport looks set to go ahead, even if the developer Austexx is placed in receivership, ABC News reported. There have been talks in Melbourne this week between Austexx and its lenders who, it's understood, are poised to place the debt-laden company into receivership. The company plans to build a $70 million DFO on land near Hobart Airport later this year. Hobart Airport's Brett Reiss says he is committed to the retail development and will seek an alternative developer if necessary.

Household and corporate debts are continuing on an upward trend, spawning fears that they will combine to create a toxic cocktail for the Korean economy with the prolonged slump in the real estate market, The Korea Times reported. The central bank said Tuesday that households and corporate lending reached 1,409 trillion won ($1.2 trillion) in June, as a low interest rate led them to take out loans from financial companies.

Regulators, suspecting that banks and trusts are secretly repackaging old loans and moving them off bank balance sheets, are concerned that financial institutions in China may have engaged in the same sort of financial engineering that got Western banks into trouble. On Aug. 10, government overseers acted again, ordering banks to move any off-balance-sheet loans back onto their books and to make provisions to safeguard against a rise in bad loans, according to a copy of the government order given to The New York Times by an industry expert.

China faces the threats of faltering demand for exports, rising wages and the risk of bad loans from record lending after surpassing Japan as the world’s second- biggest economy last quarter, Bloomberg reported. The boost to China’s “national pride” from the second- quarter milestone may not count for much if it fails to boost domestic consumption and reduce its reliance on exports and investment for growth, said Brian Jackson, an emerging-markets strategist at Royal Bank of Canada in Hong Kong.

Melbourne DFO is under threat with a crippling $500 million debt that could see ACCC chief Graeme Samuel lose his $50m personal fortune, news.com.au reported on a story from The Australian. The DFO is expected to be placed in receivership as early as today in a move that would put the future of Austexx, the group behind the Direct Factory Outlets chain, in doubt. The collapse could see Graeme Samuel, who said he only became aware of the seriousness of the problem in recent weeks, face a $50 million-plus wipeout of most of his personal fortune.

About three in 10 households suffered from a deficit in the second quarter, the worst figure in six years, and further confirmation that the ongoing recovery has not yet benefited the household economy, The Korea Times reported. According to Statistics Korea, 28.1 percent of households sustained a deficit from April to June, up 0.3 percentage points compared to the same period in the previous year. It is the worst ratio in the comparison of the same quarter since 2004, when 28.2 percent surveyed said that their expenditure surpassed their “disposable” income.

Cash-strapped South Korean car maker Ssangyong Motor Co., still under bankruptcy protection, Friday said improved sales helped narrow net losses in the second quarter, with an expanded product lineup in the second half to further boost earnings in the second half, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The net loss narrowed to KRW21.54 billion ($18 million) in the three months ended June 30 from KRW177.17 billion a year earlier, the result of higher sales and debt-rescheduling associated with its court-ordered bankruptcy protection, Ssangyong said in a statement.