Asia Pacific

The troubled German regional bank BayernLB said on Monday that it would shed more than a quarter of its workforce by 2013, with Asian operations slated to bear the brunt of a rigourous downsizing, Agence France-Presse reported today. A statement said BayernLB would eliminate 5,600 posts of a total 19,200 in a bid to save 670 million euros ($850 million) over the next five years. BayernLB “will be smaller and engaged in fewer activities, but it will emerge stronger, closer to its customers and less susceptible to incalculable risk," chairman Michael Kemmer was quoted as saying.

South Korea tackled one big problem, bank liquidity, after the economic crisis went global in recent months. Now another problem is creating uncertainty: high levels of household debt. South Korea in the past five years has built some of the biggest levels of household debt in the world, The Wall Street Journal reported. Household debt increased to 66% of South Korea's gross domestic product last year from 38% a decade earlier, according to a recent study by the International Monetary Fund. As the economy slows, the high level of household debt could lead to more delinquencies.

Morimoto Co., a property developer, filed for protection from creditors with 162 billion yen ($1.7 billion) of debt, bringing the number of bankruptcies among publicly traded companies in Japan to a postwar record, Bloomberg reported. The bankruptcy is the second-largest in Japan this year following Urban Corp.’s filing on Aug. 13. The company’s filing with the Tokyo District Court pushed the total in 2008 to 30, the most since World War II, based on information from Teikoku Databank Ltd., a bankruptcy research firm.

Centro Properties Group, the owner of 794 shopping malls in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, is continuing talks with lenders to extend more than $4.5 billion of borrowings by Dec. 15 after failing to raise new capital, Bloomberg reported. The real estate investment trust may have to go into receivership unless creditors including Commonwealth Bank of Australia Ltd. and National Australia Bank Ltd. agree to roll over loans, Melbourne-based Centro said today in a statement.

The International Monetary Fund approved a $7.6 billion loan for Pakistan on Tuesday to prevent it from defaulting on its debt and to help stabilize its economy, The New York Times reported. The loan, under discussion for more than a month, at first met strong resistance from the Pakistani government, which sought money on more generous terms from other countries. But Pakistan’s major allies--the United States, China and Saudi Arabia--insisted that it accept the loan and the IMF conditions before they offered assistance.

China's central bank slashed borrowing costs by the biggest margin in a decade, in a strong signal that government efforts to support the economy didn't end with the announcement of a massive stimulus plan just over two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The move, announced Wednesday, brings the benchmark one-year lending rate down by 1.08 percentage points to 5.58%, with the benchmark one-year deposit rate cut by the same margin to 2.52%, the People's Bank of China said in a statement.

About 30 percent of Indian industrial metal importers have defaulted on consignments after prices slumped by more than half, the head of a trade body said on Wednesday. "Most of the importers are hit severely. Some importers who had taken bigger risks are not able to clear consignments from the ports," Surendra Mardia, president of the Bombay Metal Exchange (BME), told Reuters in an interview. The BME, with about 500 members, is the biggest association of non-ferrous metal traders in India.

South Korea's financial watchdog said Wednesday it would set up a task force to advise troubled companies on corporate restructuring to help them ride out the credit crunch, Agence France-Presse reported today. The team of 43 experts will be formed Friday and work for one year, the Financial Services Commission said. South Korea has announced a series of steps to lessen the effect of the global slowdown, including $16 billion in loans to ease a dollar shortage for firms importing raw materials and exporting goods.

Australian parliament opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull is pushing for tax reform and a review of bankruptcy laws for big companies to protect jobs amid the global financial crisis, condemning the government's own response as making the situation worse, The Australian reported today. Turnbull accused the prime minister of a "financial blunder of epic proportions" over the unlimited bank guarantee and warned he would not offer him a "leave pass" to drive the federal budget into deficit.

Companies around the world are keen to redeploy labor resources and cut costs to cope with the global downturn, but those operating in China may find that laying off people there will not be as easy as previously, Forbes reported. For the ten-month period from January to October, those who lost their jobs numbered 10.2 million, topping Beijing's forecast for the entirety of 2008 by 2.0%, minister of human resources and social security Yin Weimin said at a press conference Thursday. In response, authorities are clamping down on the freedom to dismiss substantial numbers of workers.