Asia Pacific

Failed property financier Strategic Finance has reported an audited annual loss of NZ$175 million for the year to June 30, just six weeks after predicting a full year loss of NZ$98 million, The New Zealand Herald reported.

Hellas Telecommunications II, parent of Greece's Wind Hellas, said it had begun talks to seek support from shareholder Weather Investments as it expects to run short of cash and is considering restructuring alternatives. Weather Investments is an Italian holding company majority-owned by Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris, with mobile, fixed, Internet and international communication operations in Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Pakistan and Tunisia.

Japan is on the verge of a reluctant revolution, The Wall Street Journal reported. On Sunday, voters here are poised to remove the country's ruling party from power after 54 years of nearly continuous rule. Polls show voters in Sunday's election heavily favor the Democratic Party of Japan, an 11-year-old collection of market reformers, union leaders and consumer activists that has never held full political power.

DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. and Julius Baer Holding AG are among potential buyers of ING Groep NV’s private banking operations, three people familiar with the matter said. Amsterdam-based ING, the biggest Dutch financial-services company, is seeking at least $1.8 billion for the assets, two of the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity, Bloomberg reported. DBS, ANZ Bank and Julius Baer are among companies picked by ING to enter final bidding for its Asian and Swiss private banking units as early as next week, they said.

The company developing the $300 million Fiji Beach Resort & Spa managed by Hilton says it is on the verge of going into receivership, The New Zealand Herald reported. Neville Mahon, Auckland-based developer of the huge luxury property, has written to villa owners saying receivership of Denarau Investments is imminent. Bank Of Scotland (BoS) and Auckland finance company Strategic had funded the project. Mahon says he has been unable to pay dozens of investors who bought villas at his Hilton Denarau Island project, planned to be eventually expanded and called Fiji Hilton.

The threat of receivership hanging over embattled finance company St Laurence Ltd probably won't spill over to St Laurence Property & Finance Ltd, according to Kevin Podmore, a director of both companies, The New Zealand Herald reported. Podmore is in talks with the trustee for St Laurence Ltd., Perpetual Trust, to try to stave off receivership amid concern the company won't be able to meet the terms of its moratorium. Some 9,000 investors owed NZ$250 million in frozen funds last year agreed to give the company until 2013 to repay 70 per cent of its debentures.

Bankruptcy petitions in Hong Kong surged 36 percent in July from the same month a year ago, but the jump was lower than an 89 percent year-on-year rise in June as the economy picked up, government data showed on Friday. The territory recorded 1,475 bankruptcy petitions last month, down 9 percent from 1,619 in June and compared to 1,081 in July 2008, Reuters reported. Read more.

Households wilting under mortgage stress and credit card blowouts are set to receive greater protection from bankruptcy, Australia’s Herald Sun reported. Changes to be unveiled today make it harder for creditors to force battlers into personal insolvency. And extra time will be allowed for debtors to reorganise their affairs instead of plunging headlong into bankruptcy. The changes come as households face added pressure amid prospects of interest rates rising to pre-November 2008 levels. Recent years have witnessed a surge in non-business bankruptcies.

Yu Yongding, the Chinese economist whose calls for liberalizing the yuan heralded its 21 percent gain since 2005, said the government should reduce sales aimed at keeping the currency weak so it can someday float freely, Bloomberg reported. “The People’s Bank of China should try to reduce intervention on the exchange rate as much as possible,” Yu, a member of the central bank’s monetary policy committee from 2004 to 2006, said in an interview.

A new article published in the latest overseas edition of China's Communist Party flagship newspaper addresses an issue of growing urgency in global financial markets: how to best manage the world's largest pile of foreign reserves, The Australian reported. With more than $US2 trillion in stock, China faces a number of challenges as it seeks to diversify its foreign reserves without hurting the value of its massive US dollar assets, including Treasuries. The commentary highlighted two major problems.