Asia Pacific

Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. held discussions this week with General Motors Corp. about the possibility of buying Adam Opel GmbH if an existing bid for the European unit of GM falls through, a person familiar with the situation said, The Wall Street Journal reported. GM executives in Europe met with representatives of Beijing Auto after the Chinese government-owned company expressed interest in Opel for a second time, the person said.

Global insurance-industry regulators are set to begin talks this week on creating the first common rules on solvency requirements for international insurers, in an effort to prevent crises like that which nearly buried American International Group Inc. last year, The Wall Street Journal reported. At a three-day meeting in Taiwan scheduled to start Wednesday, the International Association of Insurance Supervisors is expected to work out a detailed schedule to come up with requirements for major insurers' solvency margin ratios, people familiar with the matter said.

Strains in pensions systems, in both private and public provision, threaten to turn the financial crisis of the past two years into a social crisis lasting for decades, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned on Tuesday. In its annual analysis of the health of pensions systems globally, the Paris-based organisation found private pension plans lost 23 per cent of their value last year, while higher unemployment “leaves little room for more generous public pensions”, the Financial Times reported.

Western consumers are buying fewer luxury goods, and demand for cashmere has plunged, The New York Times reported. The painful effects of this are being felt all the way to these nearly empty plateaus of Inner Mongolia, by goatherds and factory workers and owners — showing how ripples from markets in the United States, Europe and Japan can reverberate to some of the most remote corners of the world. The problem is not just the collapse of the cashmere market, but also a government ban on Kashmir goats across much of Inner Mongolia for environmental reasons.

Bankruptcy petitions in Hong Kong in May jumped 54 percent from a year earlier, totalling 1,417, as the territory continued to struggle with economic recession, but they fell on a monthly basis for a second straight month, government data showed on Friday, Reuters reported. Bankruptcies in April totalled 1,490, up 56 percent from a year earlier. The number of bankruptcies in May was the lowest since January and marked only the third time since August that bankruptcy petitions, which give an indication of future bankruptcies, had fallen from the previous month.

The receivers of ABC Learning have sold the failed childcare operator's UK operations, Busy Bees, for an undisclosed sum, The Australian reported. McGrathNicol today said Busy Bees Group, the largest children's nursery group in the UK, was sold to Singapore's Knowledge Universe Education. The receiver said the sale of ABC's New Zealand assets was progressing well; the sale timetable had been extended following strong interest from a number of bidders.

Porsche Automobil Holding SE said Wednesday that the company's owner family backs its talks with Qatar over taking a stake in the Stuttgart-based company, dismissing a German media report published earlier Wednesday, Dow Jones reported. "The family unanimously supports the talks with an investor," Porsche said in a statement, adding that there was no family meeting at which Ferdinand Piech allegedly hindered a decision for Qatar to take a stake. Financial Times Deutschland reported earlier Wednesday that the planned deal with Qatar was at risk after Piech intervened at a family meeting.

Troubled Saudi conglomerates Saad Group and Ahmad Hamad al-Gosaibi & Bros Co will meet creditors this month to restructure $10 billion of debt, a Saudi newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed bankers. Al-Hayat newspaper said the two firms would talk to their creditors over the next two weeks in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Great Britain. The paper said that there were more than 100 creditors that would agree to major debt restructuring. This is the first time a figure has been given for the size of the debts. Al-Hayat did not say how much each company had in debt.

Beijing is diversifying its overseas investments and pressing U.S. officials for an "exit strategy" from the ultra-loose fiscal and monetary policies that China fears will eventually inflate away the value of its U.S. bond holdings and fell the dollar. But China's pragmatic policymakers also know there is no practical alternative to the dollar as the world's main reserve currency.

The head of the IMF questioned on Monday any debate about when to roll back stimulus spending, saying the world economy had yet to weather the worst of a recession that claimed a record number of European jobs. The 16-country euro zone lost a record 1.22 million jobs in the first quarter, official data showed. Employment during the first quarter fell 1.2 percent year-on-year, the deepest annual drop since measurements started in 1995. Even if some form of economic recovery is not far off, analysts say unemployment will climb for many months to come.