Korea Asset Management Corp. (KAMCO), the state-run debt clearer, is close to determining salvageable loans from its massive pile of distressed real-estate assets it has acquired from secondary banks in past years, company chairman Chang Young-chul said here Wednesday, The Korea Times reported. The toxic assets will be sent back to the lenders, which could further contaminate their financial health. Between 2008 and 2010, KAMCO had bought a combined 6.2 trillion won (about $5.8 billion) worth of construction project loans from savings banks.

Troubled property investment company Irongate has asked trustee Perpetual to call in the receivers after failing to secure a deal to raise the $50 million it needs to pay out retail bondholders this month, BusinessDay.co.nz reported. Formerly called St Laurence Property & Finance, Irongate has been selling properties and seeking an equity injection to remedy a continuing breach of its two trust deed ratios and enable it to meet the listed bonds repayment.

The percentage of New Zealand's $168.2 billion worth of mortgages on floating, or variable, interest rates has popped up above half for the first time since the Reserve Bank started collecting the data on floating versus fixed-term rates in June 1998, The New Zealand Herald reported. Figures out from the central bank show $84.6 billion, or 50.29 per cent, worth of mortgages on floating interest rates and $83 billion, or 49.34 per cent, on fixed-term interest rates. A small sum is recorded as unallocated.

The government announced a package of measures designed to stimulate the housing market by helping first-time buyers and property investors, which included creating a bad bank to soak up soured construction loans, The Korea Times reported. Reducing transfer taxes for homeowners in Seoul and the metropolitan area and extending tax incentives for real estate investment trusts (REITs) and funds that buy unsold properties were also part of the plan unveiled Sunday.

Restoring investor confidence in New Zealand’s financial markets is the major goal of the new Financial Markets Authority, which was formally established Monday, The National Business Review reported. The FMA takes over the functions of the Securities Commission and Government Actuary which are being disestablished, and consolidates other regulatory functions from the Ministry of Economic Development.

Spyker Cars NV, which owns the troubled Swedish car maker Saab Automobile, is in talks with three Chinese companies about possible investments, according to two people familiar with the situation, as the Dutch car maker Friday cut its 2011 sales outlook and reported an operating loss for the first quarter. The Chinese companies are Great Wall Motor Co., China Youngman Automobile Group Co. and Jiangsu Yueda Group Co., two people familiar with the matter told Dow Jones Newswires.

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (1398) Ltd. led the nation’s biggest banks in curbing defaults in the first quarter, helping alleviate concern that their asset quality may deteriorate following a two-year credit boom, Bloomberg reported. Bad loans at Beijing-based ICBC, the world’s most profitable bank, dropped almost 4 percent from the end of 2010 as earnings for the three-month period climbed 29 percent from a year earlier, according to an exchange filing yesterday.

Japanese industrial production and consumer spending dropped at their sharpest rates on record in March, the government said Thursday, underscoring the impact of the recent earthquake and tsunami and the continuing nuclear plant crisis on the nation's fragile economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The latest data show how sharply the Japanese economy veered from its recovery track after the March 11 disaster disrupted the nation's supply chains, impaired nuclear power generation and darkened the mood among consumers.

The threat of a cut to Japan’s credit rating adds pressure on Prime Minister Naoto Kan to raise taxes as he wrestles with financing earthquake rebuilding without adding to the world’s biggest public debt burden, Bloomberg reported. Standard & Poor’s lowered its outlook yesterday to “negative” on Japan’s AA- local-currency rating, estimating that costs stemming from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis may boost budget deficits by 3.7 percent of gross domestic product through 2013.

A new report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) argues New Zealand to favour a capital gains tax, and lift the retirement age, The New Zealand Herald reported. The OECD's latest economic survey of New Zealand, published today, said lacklustre growth reflected structural shortcomings of the economy. As the 2000s progressed, the main sources of rising prosperity had increasingly become commodity-based terms of trade improvements, credit-fuelled capital gains on property, and rising government spending, the OECD said.