Asia Pacific

One of New Zealand’s main kitchen design, build and sale companies went in to receivership yesterday, The National Business Review reported. Kitchen House has a manufacturing facility in Mt Wellington that manufactures cabinets, bench tops and doors. The company also has seven wholly owned super stores, and a discount factory in Auckland and other North Island shopping areas. BDO Spicers Auckland announced Shaun Adams and Brian Mayo-Smith were appointed joint receivers and managers of the company on February 23.

The number of consumers in Singapore struggling to pay their credit card bills and personal loans rose in the fourth quarter, data showed on Tuesday, as recession deepened in the city-state, Reuters reported. The proportion of consumers who had delinquent personal loans--due for 30 or more days--rose to 5.34 percent in December from 3.73 percent a year earlier, according to private forecaster Credit Bureau Singapore. The rate rose from 4.24 percent in September 2008.

Global Business System Corp. has become the first Kospi-listed company ordered to go into bankruptcy by the Seoul Central District Court since the global economic crisis, the JoongAng Daily reported. The court said yesterday that the Seoul branch of Netherlands-based ABN Amro Bank filed a bankruptcy petition against GBS Corp. in November 2008 after the bank failed to collect $6 million in bonds from GBS. “GBS Corp.

World stock markets fell sharply Friday as the selling pressure on Wall Street was expected to continue at the open later amid pessimism about the ability of governments to prevent the deepest global economic downturn in generations, the Associated Press reported. Investors in Asia and Europe found few reasons to wade into the market after the Dow Jones industrial average breached the levels it touched in November, when global equities went into a tailspin as the financial crisis gathered steam.

U.K. home repossessions rose to the highest since 1996 last year and may almost double in the next 12 months as Britain’s recession deepens, the Council of Mortgage Lenders said. Banks took possession of 40,000 properties last year, a 54 percent increase from 2007, the London-based group said in an e- mailed statement today. It predicted the total will reach 75,000 this year. Ministry of Justice data showed 142,626 repossession proceedings began in courts in 2008, the most since 1991.

Donor countries to the Khmer Rouge tribunal have commended the war crimes court for beginning its first trial on Tuesday, a step it claims moves Cambodia much closer to achieving justice and national reconciliation. But as congratulatory messages flood in, donors remain silent on further pledges to the financially troubled chambers, failing to allay fears by officials that the court's Cambodian side looks set to become bankrupt by the end of the month, The Phnom Penh Post reported.

Multinational companies are hiring less or cutting existing staff in China as they struggle through the global economic crisis, according to state media, Agence France-Presse reported. Nearly 70 percent of firms polled in a survey by FESCO, a Beijing-based, state-run recruitment agency targeting foreign companies, said they were scaling back their recruitment plans this year, the China Daily reported. In addition, 27 percent said they had already started laying off employees, the survey found after polling 356 of its clients in different industries across China, the newspaper said.

General Motors Co. is trying to line up $6 billion in financial support from five governments in addition to the U.S. federal aid outlined in its restructuring plan late Tuesday, Dow Jones Newswires reported. The U.S. automaker said it is in talks with authorities in Germany, the U.K., Sweden, Canada and Thailand to secure the aid by March 31, in line with a U.S. government deadline for continuing and extending support to keep the company out of bankruptcy protection.

Australian bank Westpac says it is encountering further stress in its New Zealand business, The National Business Review reported. The statement was made as part of an update to the Australian market in which Westpac forecast a $A1.2 ($NZ1.52) billion profit in the three months to December 31, down 2 percent on last year. The statement shows a steep increase in the number of New Zealanders with mortgages 90 days or more in arrears. At the end of December, 0.66 of a percent of Westpac's New Zealand mortgage book had payments 90 days or more in arrears.

Russia has won $25 billion in loans from China in return for agreeing to supply oil from new fields in eastern Siberia for the next 20 years as Moscow seeks funds to see its oil industry through the financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. Transneft, Russia’s oil pipeline monopoly, said on Tuesday China had agreed to lend it $10 billion (€8 billion, £7 billion) and Rosneft, Russia’s state-controlled oil giant, $15 billion in return for 20 years’ worth of oil supplies.