Asia Pacific

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has asked the bankruptcy court to let it retain Jones Day as special counsel to help the former financial services company with issues that have arisen in the Asia-Pacific region related to its Chapter 11 case. In a motion filed Wednesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Lehman said the law firm would help it in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan and Australia with matters related to its bankruptcy filing.

Japanese apartment developer Japan General Estate Co said on Thursday it has filed for bankruptcy protection with debts of 197.5 billion yen ($2.2 billion), Reuters reported. Hit by a slump in sales and a credit crunch sparked by U.S. subprime loan problems, nearly 600 real estate companies collapsed in Japan in 2008 after failing to make debt repayments.

Japanese police have arrested the chairman of a bedding company on suspicion he swindled investors out of $2.5 billion, in what local media said would be the biggest financial scam in Japanese history, Bloomberg reported. Officers from the Tokyo Metropolitan and Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectural police departments converged on the home of Kazutsugi Nami, 75, chairman of L&G KK, this morning, arresting him and 20 other people, said an official in the Metropolitan Police Department who declined to give his name citing policy.

Williams and Adams, Wellington's longest established and largest motor vehicle dealership, has gone into liquidation, The National Business Review reported. John Fisk of PricewaterhouseCoopers said Williams family shareholders met yesterday afternoon and passed a resolution to put the company into liquidation. The owners of the fourth generation family business had taken the failure of the business hard, he said. The company employs 115 staff and has 10 sites. It sells Holden, HSV, SAAB, Hummer, Jaguar and Land Rover brands.

The delinquency rate of South Korean credit card firms rose in the fourth of last year from three months earlier amid the ongoing economic slumping, the Korea Times reported on Thursday. The default ratio of Samsung Card and four other card firms reached 3.43 percent at the end of last year, up 0.15 percentage point from three months earlier, data from the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) showed.

India's capital markets regulator Monday said it has received a request from the board of Satyam Computer Services Ltd. to ease rules relating to open offer pricing. Such a change, if granted, could pave the way for a takeover of the software exporter, The Wall Street Journal reported. The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India told reporters that SEBI recognizes that there is a need to amend pricing norms for open offers to suit all situations.

Several Asian nations reported sharp slowdowns in January inflation, setting the stage for more government intervention at a time of increasing global concerns about the threat of deflation, The Wall Street Journal reported. The softening of prices also gives Asian central banks additional leeway they need to cut interest rates as worries about economic growth deepen, analysts say. Monday's data offered the latest evidence that inflation rates are falling rapidly across the Asia-Pacific region.

Several Dubai-based contractors say they are owed millions of dirhams by state-linked developers and some may face bankruptcy as credit dries up and major projects are cancelled or scaled back in the former Gulf Arab boom town, Reuters reported. "There has been a marked increase in the number of contractors asking for help to obtain payment, including payments certified months ago on some of Dubai's largest projects," Michael Grose, a partner at legal firm Clyde & Co LLP, in the Middle East Projects and Construction Group, told Reuters.

Lawyers saw a significant jump in insolvency, litigation and debt and corporate restructuring activities during the fourth quarter of last year--but they feel this may be just the tip of the iceberg, The Straits Times reported. With the worsening economic climate, recent months have seen law firms busy with the financing woes at listed companies, such as Chinese steel coil-maker FerroChina, China Printing & Dyeing, Jurong Technologies and electronics retailer TT International.

China has pledged to take all necessary measures to stimulate its economy and fuel consumer spending, but has rejected as “ridiculous” suggestions that its huge pool of domestic savings has been partly to blame for the global financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. In a rare interview, Wen Jiabao, China’s premier, said in London on Sunday that Beijing was considering fresh measures to boost its economy beyond its Rmb4,000 billion ($585 billion, €458 billion, £404 billion) fiscal package launched late last year.