Asia Pacific

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warned of growing inflation expectations in a rare domestic media interview, expressing concerns about the nation's fast-rising real-estate prices and acknowledging that Beijing may be paying a price for its aggressive response to the global financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported. Speaking to the state-run Xinhua news agency on Sunday, Mr. Wen also flatly rejected foreign criticism of China's exchange-rate policy, saying that stability in the yuan's value helps the global economy and that China won't bow to pressure to let it appreciate.

Aiful Corp. rose in Tokyo, adding to last week’s 35 percent gain, after Japan’s third-largest consumer lender reached an agreement with creditors that will help it avoid bankruptcy, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. The Kyoto-based lender, which said Dec. 24 that creditors approved a plan to delay repayments on 279.1 billion yen ($3.05 billion) of debt, rose as much as 3.6 percent to 144 yen and traded at 140 yen at the 11 a.m. break in Tokyo. Aiful met 65 creditors in Tokyo last week and won approval to resume repaying its loans from Sept.

When a Seattle-based Chinese language program in Beijing suddenly canceled classes and shut down, more than a dozen students were left stranded, though they had prepaid their tuition and housing, The Seattle Times reported. Now, the company's Seattle headquarters is closed, its phones disconnected and its Web site claims it has filed bankruptcy. The owners have moved to Sweden. Most of the 67 students — from all over the world — have either gone home or arranged for classes at other schools in Beijing, at additional expense.

Aiful Corp., Japan’s third-largest consumer lender by assets, won approval from creditors for a debt restructuring plan that will enable it to avoid bankruptcy, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. The Kyoto-based company met with about 70 creditors, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., in Tokyo today and they agreed to allow the company to delay payments on 280 billion yen ($3.1 billion) of loans, said the people, who declined to be identified before an official announcement.

Dubai must raise funds to feed its mushrooming debt but the Gulf emirate dreads imposing taxes to avoid breaking a business model that helped turn it from a lazy fishing town to a regional trade and tourism hub, Reuters reported. Selling some prized assets appears to be an easier option. Dubai, one of seven members of the United Arab Emirates federation, and state-linked firms owe an estimated $80 billion of debt borrowed to fuel a boom, when Dubai branded itself as a tax-free destination for foreign workers and businesses.

Foreign investors were a major force in New York’s real estate boom of the last decade, with families and companies from Dubai to Australia swallowing weekend apartments and Midtown office towers. In 2007, the roster of international investors came to include a British firm, Dawnay Day, whose executives had a splashy reputation for spending millions on fine art and yachts, The New York Times reported. The efforts [to regentrify East Harlem neighborhoods], though, didn’t get far before the recession spread across the globe and Dawnay Day went bust.

Two quarters of economic growth after five quarters of contraction is positive news but New Zealand’s recovery remains fragile, Finance Minister Bill English says, The National Business Review reported. GDP figures released today show the economy grew 0.2% in the September quarter and the June quarter has been revised upward from 0.1% to 0.2%. For the year to September, the economy contracted 2.2% compared with the year to September 2008. Mr English said the recovery remained fragile and any further problems abroad could weaken New Zealand's growth prospects.

Temirbank, a unit of BTA Bank, Kazakhstan’s second-biggest lender by assets, said its decision to default last month came after the value of bad loans on its books quadrupled, a Temirbank managing director said. Temirbank’s bad loans soared to 80.6 billion tenge ($543 million) in the third quarter from 22.2 billion tenge in the second, according to a filing on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange Web site, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. Erulan Kusainov said the increase followed the bank’s third-quarter decision to halt extensions made on “masses” of loans in 2008.

Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman Sheldon Adelson Monday said he expects to restart construction on the casino operator's delayed resort projects in Macau in about five months, with the first two phases of the project to be completed by the end of 2011, The Wall Street Journal reported. Construction of the project was halted in November last year due to a lack of funding during the credit crunch. The new target underscores Sands' renewed ambitions in Macau, the world's biggest casino growth market and the only place in China where gambling is legal.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s European and Japanese units have swapped $2 billion in assets, allowing $1 billion to be dispersed under the European division's claims resolution agreement, Bankruptcy Law360 reported. Read more. (Subscription required.)