Asia Pacific

Edward Harman, the New Zealand man behind a string of failed investments involving a coterie of well-known business people, has been bankrupted as concerns emerge over the liquidation of his companies, The National Business Review reported. Mr Harman was declared bankrupt last week in the High Court at Auckland, as the result of a creditor’s petition. He is the director of five companies placed into voluntary liquidation last July: Fairthorne Investments, Fairthorne Trading, Fairthorne Ventures, Paeroa Investments and Wake Investments.

The New Zealand government says it had no reason to believe that Mascot Finance would fail when it granted it a taxpayer-funded deposit guarantee in January, The Press reported. Questions over whether the Crown should have given Mascot Finance a guarantee arose after if it went into receivership seven weeks after getting a guarantee. How big the bill to the taxpayer will be from Mascot is unclear. Receivers Deloitte say it is too early to say whether Mascot's assets outweigh its liabilities.

The brutal slew of layoffs in the legal industry continued Tuesday, with Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP announcing it would let go 300 associates and staff in the United States, Asia and Europe, and DLA Piper slashing 54 lawyers and support staff in Asia in light of the continuing worldwide economic crisis. Orrick said the move was necessary due to the world economic crisis “and the impact of that crisis on our clients and the levels of activity in the world market.” It said the layoffs were unrelated to performance and affected attorneys and staff throughout its offices and practices.

Tritec Manufacturing’s UK subsidiary Mountain Buggy UK has had all its European assets frozen by a Dutch bank after Denmark-based company DK Intertrade alleged the pushchair manufacturer had breached a contract, The National Business Review reported. The Danish distribution company was in court in New Zealand last week in a bid to get compensation as it believes Mountain Buggy breached a distribution contract. The company had already asked the Dutch court to freeze the assets of the UK subsidiary.

A receiver has been appointed to one of New Zealand's most prolific TV companies, Ninox Television, maker of shows including Location, Location, Location and Sensing Murder, The New Zealand Herald reported. Receiver Stephen Lawrence of PKF Insolvency and Recovery declined to give details about the company and the status of creditors. A Ninox director, John McEwan, said the receivership was part of a restructuring exercise and did not affect the operations of the company.

A New York private-equity group, KPS Capital Partners LP, agreed to buy the Irish and U.K. operations of Waterford Wedgwood PLC, the historic ceramics-and-crystal maker that was placed in a form of bankruptcy in January, The Wall Street Journal reported. The deal was announced by accounting firm Deloitte LLP, which has been trying to sell the company since it was placed in administration Jan. 5 after years of heavy losses under its former chairman and major shareholder, Irish businessman Sir Anthony O'Reilly.

Asia Aluminum Holdings Ltd. will show bondholders tomorrow how much they are likely to get back if they fail to accept a restructuring proposal and push the company into bankruptcy, according to Chairman Kwong Wui Chun, Bloomberg reported. “I want to give investors a picture of the situation” by sharing a liquidation analysis prepared by a consulting firm, Kwong said in an interview in Hong Kong, without naming the company. Kwong on Feb.

Investment bank ABN Amro and New Zealand’s biggest retail investment advisory network ABN Amro Craigs could soon be ringfenced into a “bad bank,” put up for sale and forced to cut jobs. Royal Bank of Scotland owns half of ABN Amro Craigs and all of ABN Amro in New Zealand, and its radical restructure is expected to create a separate “bad bank” consisting of unwanted businesses and toxic assets, which is ringfenced from the rest of the RBS balance sheet. ABN Amro Craigs has more than 60,000 retail investor clients, and 300 staff in 17 locations around New Zealand.

Japan's exports nearly halved in January from a year earlier, with record slides in shipments to the United States, Europe and the rest of Asia pointing to a deepening recession across much of the world, Reuters reported. Japanese car exports fell by two-thirds from a year earlier, accelerating from a 45 percent annual decline seen in December, as the value of overall exports hit a 10-year low. "We don't see any signs of a pick-up in the Japanese economy in the near term. The economy will gradually worsen further," said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.

Financial Secretary John Tsang predicted Wednesday the Hong Kong economy will contract by 2% to 3% this year, and he pledged to boost government spending to ease the pains of a deepening recession, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mr. Tsang said in his annual budget address that Hong Kong's government will spend a total 301.6 billion Hong Kong dollars (US$38.66 billion) in the next fiscal year that starts April 1. That figure would be down from estimated spending of HK$317.8 billion in the fiscal year ending March 31. Critics have charged that Mr.