Asia Pacific

Investors in failed finance company Strategic Finance are to get their first payout since the company was placed in receivership, TVNZ reported. Receivers PricewaterhouseCooper announced a payout next month of between 1.5 and 2.5 cents in the dollar to approximately 13,000 investors. Strategic Finance and its associated companies went into moratorium two years ago owing investors around $400 million dollars. In March this year, they were placed into receivership with their loan books estimated at $229 million.

Dubai International Capital, the private equity arm of the Gulf Arab emirate, said it will focus on bringing German aluminium maker Almatis out of bankruptcy after a long-running battle with a dissident lender ended, Reuters Africa reported. Oaktree Capital Management LP withdrew its opposition to DIC's plan to retain control of the bankrupt firm after a settlement offer was leaked. Oaktree and Dubai have been battling over the best way to refinance Almatis, which filed for bankruptcy in the United States with more than $1 billion in debt, for the past year.

Lombard Finance and Investments' receiver has advised of a further payment to investors and is sticking to an estimate of a final payout in the 15 to 24 per cent range, The New Zealand Herald reported. Secured debenture holders received 6.5c in the dollar last December. A further three cents in the dollar would be paid on Thursday or close to that date, the receiver PricewaterhouseCooper said. The receivers said the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) had yet to finalise its claims in the receiverships.

Hong Kong risks a property bubble if home prices keep rising, said Peter Wong, HSBC Holdings Plc’s chief executive officer for the Asia-Pacific region, Bloomberg reported. The Hong Kong government is trying to curb 42 percent surge in home prices since the beginning of 2009 amid concern housing is out of reach of ordinary residents. Prices may rise 10 percent in the second half of this year if interest rates remain at two-decade lows and the local economy keeps growing, according to property consultant Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.

Investors are understandably scared of the sovereign debt crisis unfolding in Europe. Amid their angst, however, they are ignoring a more likely, and significantly larger, debt catastrophe that is about to hit the nation with the second-largest economy in the world — Japan. Two decades of stimulative, low-interest-rate fiscal policy have made Japan the most indebted nation in the developed world, and as new Prime Minister Naoto Kan recently said, in his first address to Parliament, that situation is not sustainable, Seeking Alpha reported.

The debt-ridden Korea Land and Housing Corp. (LH), the state-run housing company, says its financial troubles will force it to kill or water down most of its 140 new housing and redevelopment projects around the country, The Korea Times reported. And the government, caught between letting the air out of the bubble and creating another one, is quick to turn its back on its ailing mule, although its ineptitude in real-estate policies is blamed for creating much of LH’s troubles in the first place.

A Kazakhstan bank's bid to use the U.S. bankruptcy court to halt an overseas legal proceeding could drag the court into disputes in which the U.S. itself has little at stake, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Kazakhstan's JSC BTA Bank says the U.S. bankruptcy court's decision to grant it Chapter 15 protection in the U.S. after it underwent restructuring in its home country last year extended a key benefit of U.S. bankruptcy law: the automatic stay that halts legal action against a debtor company.

Debt-ridden Japan Airlines Corp and the state-backed turnaround body overseeing its rehabilitation said the firm's capital plans, including negotiations for new financing, will be not be finalized until September or later, the Nikkei business daily reported. JAL and the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp of Japan (ETIC) said they will be able to submit a rehabilitation plan to the Tokyo District Court by the end of August, as scheduled, the paper reported.

Debt-ridden Japan Airlines Corp and the state-backed turnaround body overseeing its restructuring have sought lender approval to waive off more than 521.6 billion yen ($6 billion) that JAL owes, the Nikkei business daily reported. Of the 521.6 billion yen for which approval is being sought, the company has 383 billion yen in loans and the rest in corporate bond and derivatives, the paper said. As part of the restructuring plan, the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp of Japan has asked the Development Bank of Japan to write off 142.1 billion yen of JAL debt on its books, Nikkei reported.

At last some answers to a major question mark hanging over the Chinese banking sector: Just how much of its lending has gone to local government investment vehicles—and how iffy has that lending been? Because of restrictions on how much local governments can borrow from banks directly, off-balance-sheet funding has become a key means for them to obtain financing. These funds, in turn, have fueled the investment boom that lies behind China's solid economic growth since the global financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal Heard on the Street blog reported.