Asia Pacific

Twenty-two Chinese dairy firms will pay $160 million into a compensation fund for families of babies that died or fell ill after drinking tainted milk, Agence France-Presse reported. At least six babies in China died this year and another 294,000 fell ill after drinking milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine, which is normally used to make plastic. According to the China Business News, the new fund will come into effect from January and pay for medical treatment and operations for diseases caused by the tainted milk.

U.S. car parts maker Delphi Corp. has suspended work at a factory in Suzhou due to shrinking demand amid the global economic slump, a media report and a staff member said Monday. The factory west of Shanghai in the city of Suzhou makes compressors for General Motors Corp. "Unfortunately our only customer in 2009 is GMNA, and this has placed the Suzhou compressor plant in a very dangerous position," the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post quoted a Delphi internal document as saying.

The Financial Times reported that, as a symbol of the extraordinary boom of the past decade, the rise of the big emerging economies rivalled the soaring US housing market. China led the way, followed at a slower pace by the likes of India and Brazil. Though they tried to insulate themselves against the boom-bust cycle by building up foreign exchange reserves, no amount of inoculation could render them completely immune to the virulence of the financial contagion that swept the world in September and October.

Export-reliant Asian economies showed more signs of weakness on Friday, with Japan's industrial output diving at a record pace and South Korea warning it faces an "unprecedented crisis" as global demand wilts, Reuters reported. Even the once unstoppable Chinese economy is feeling the strain, with companies recording a sharp slowdown in profit growth in the first 11 months of the year. On top of Japan's steep fall in industrial output in November, core consumer inflation fell faster than forecast last month, putting the shrinking economy on course for a spell of deflation next year.

The demand for gold in India reached an all-time high in the third quarter of 2008, reported Channel NewsAsia. With uncertainty in the financial markets, people in India have started relying on gold as a safe investment option. According to the World Gold Council of India, US$6.1 billion worth of gold was sold in the third quarter of 2008 in India, a jump of 66 percent compared to last year. The global demand for gold leapt by 18 per cent in the third quarter, boosted by sales in India.

Ssangyong Motor Co., the South Korean unit of China's largest carmaker, rose the most in three days in Seoul on an Edaily report that the Korean company may get financial aid from parent SAIC Motor Corp. this week, Bloomberg reported. A high-level official from SAIC will be arriving in Seoul tonight and will receive a briefing on the business tomorrow, Internet media Edaily said, citing an unidentified official at Ssangyong. The Pyeongtaek, South Korea-based automaker temporarily suspended production from Dec. 17 to reduce inventory as the global financial crisis weakened demand.

A Chinese court has declared bankrupt the company at the center of a scandal over tainted milk, blamed for killing six children and sickening almost 300,000 more, one of the company's owners said Wednesday. New Zealand's Fonterra Group said that a court in Shijiazhuang, in China's Hebei province, had issued a bankruptcy order against Sanlu Group Co. in response to a petition from a creditor, the Associated Press reported. The receiver will have six months to conclude the sale process.

Pawn shops, banned during more than three decades of Communist rule from 1956 to 1987, are making a comeback as China’s government tries to ease the credit crunch that is strangling small businesses, Bloomberg reported. In 1997, Beijing only had four pawn shops. This year, Beijing and Shanghai authorized a record 94 new outlets for 2009 in an effort to channel funds to the entrepreneurs who drove the nation’s biggest economic boom, according to the Beijing Pawn Trade Association and Shanghai Pawn Trade Association.

Accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers' insolvency practice, headed by receiver John Waller, has earned more than $6 million in fees from work on finance company receiverships, Companies Office filings show. That is more than two-thirds of the $9.2 million or so in receivers' fees charged so far on about 30 finance companies that have failed over the past three years, The New Zealand Herald reported today. The figures do not include hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars more in legal and advisory fees associated with receivers' work.

Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday it expects to post its first-ever operating loss in the fiscal year through March 2009 and barely eke out a net profit, showing how severely the global economic downturn is hitting even the world's most competitive companies, The Wall Street Journal reported. Japan's biggest company by market cap said it expects consolidated operating loss of ¥150 billion, or about $1.68 billion, in the fiscal year through March 31, 2009, hurt by sliding demand in the U.S., Europe and Japan and the rising yen against the dollar.