Asia Pacific

BTA Bank, the second-largest bank in Kazakhstan by assets, filed for bankruptcy protection to shield itself from U.S. creditors while it restructures about $11.6 billion in debt, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. The Almaty-based bank listed both debt and assets of more than $1 billion in Chapter 15 documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Chapter 15 of the bankruptcy code is designed to block U.S. lawsuits against a foreign company with assets in the U.S. while it restructures in its home country. Most of BTA Bank’s U.S.

About 500 students from a Perth English language school that closed on Friday will be offered positions in other similar schools across the city, ABC Perth reported. Eight schools in Australia run by the GEOS Group of companies went into voluntary administration after failing to repay millions of dollars debt. At a meeting this afternoon students of St Mark's college in the Perth suburb of Highgate were told they would not have to pay if they needed to extend their student visas as a result of the school closure.

The decline and fall of Japan Airlines, once Asia's largest carrier, which was put under bankruptcy protection on Jan. 19, is a tale of intellectual, political and financial corruption on an almost unimaginable scale, The Vancouver Sun reported. It is also an illustration of the massive task facing the new Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama if it genuinely intends to try to dismantle the institutionally entrenched wrongheadedness that has overtaken Japan during more than 50 years of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Eight English language schools operated in Australia by the GEOS group have gone into voluntary administration, leaving about 2300 foreign students unsure of their future, The Sydney Morning Herald reported on an Australian Associated Press story. Justin Walsh and Adam Nikitins of Ernst & Young have been appointed administrators to nine companies operating the schools in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Cairns. They have about 390 employees and international students from a number of different countries.

Greece’s debt crisis returned to financial markets with a vengeance as agitated investors demanded the highest premiums to buy its government bonds since the launch of European monetary union over a decade ago. The yield spread between 10-year Greek bonds and benchmark German Bunds widened dramatically on Wednesday, by almost 0.7 percentage points at one point, in what one trader called a “capitulation” to sellers worried about Greece’s ability to refinance its debt.

Greece is wooing China to buy up to €25 billion of government bonds, a move that underlines Beijing’s growing financial power, as Athens struggles to fund soaring public debt, The Irish Times reported. Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank, has been promoting a Greek bond sale to Beijing and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (Safe), which manages China’s $2,400 billion foreign exchange reserves, said people familiar with the issue.

Several Chinese banks have ordered some branches to suspend new lending for the rest of this month, people familiar with the situation said on Tuesday, as concerns rippled around markets in the region that China may take more aggressive action to rein in bank credit that is fuelling the country's rapid growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. The moves by some banks to temporarily choke off credit come amid reports of a fresh deluge of new lending in the first several weeks of this year after a year of blow-out lending in 2009.

A leading credit rating agency threatened Tuesday to downgrade Japan’s rating unless the world’s second-largest economy took more steps to rein in its mounting public debt, The New York Times reported. The warning by Standard & Poor’s, which cut its outlook for Japan’s sovereign rating for the first time since 2002, reflected concerns that the government’s efforts to trim its mounting public debt were proceeding too slowly. The Japanese economy has emerged from its worst recession since World War II, but is still reeling.

Ericsson said it would cut 1,500 jobs as part of its broad restructuring plan. In addition, the vendor's profit plunged 92 percent in the fourth quarter, hit by higher restructuring costs and weaker sales, FierceWireless reported. The Swedish company reported net profit of $43.4 million in the quarter, down from $539.4 million in the year-ago quarter. Sales slumped 13 percent to $8.08 billion, down from $9.29 billion in the fourth quarter last year. Networks sales fell 16 percent in the quarter and professional services sales were flat year-over-year.

Bank of Japan policy makers are prepared to consider expanding an emergency-loan program for banks and increasing purchases of government debt should the recovery falter, people with knowledge of the matter said, Bloomberg reported. The central bank’s board will leave interest rates and its lending program unchanged tomorrow, 16 of 17 economists said in a Bloomberg News survey.