Singapore Tin Industries (STI)’s facilities in Singapore are being sold off amid what appear to be tensions between the shareholders in the company, which is in receivership, MetalBulletin reported. In a statement, China’s Yunnan Tin Co (YTC), the 42% owner of STI, said the firm had been “running improperly” and that there had been “problems with foreign shareholders”. Sources told MB that YTC was not aware that the Singapore assets were being sold off until tender documents were made public.

Factories in China and India joined much of Europe in slashing output and jobs at a record pace in December, another sign the biggest emerging markets were wilting under the recession gripping industrialized nations, Reuters reported. Economists and policymakers had seen China, Russia, India and Brazil, with their vast markets and rising wealth, as the engines of growth that could save the world from recession. Those hopes are fading fast and forecasts are getting gloomier.

China's Lenovo Group, the world's No.4 personal computer maker, is considering a restructuring because of tough economic conditions, China Business News reported on Wednesday. The influential business newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying Lenovo might merge its Greater China and Russia operations with its Asia Pacific operations. David Miller, president for the Asia Pacific region, is expected to resign and Chen Shaopeng, now president of the Greater China region, would head the merged operations, the newspaper said.

For more than two centuries, Waterford crystal and Wedgwood china have been symbols of Irish and British craftsmanship. Now, their future may lie in Asia. Drowning in red ink, the storied brands, which merged in 1986, have moved most ceramics production to Indonesia to cut costs and now plan the same fate for crystal manufacturing. Their headquarters may soon follow. Short of funds for operations and loan payments, Waterford Wedgwood PLC is in advanced talks to sell a controlling stake to a U.S.

Sanlu Group, which was at the center of China's melamine-tainted milk scandal, has leased its plants to a subsidiary of Beijing Sanyuan Foods Co. Ltd., officials said on Tuesday, the Xinhua News Agency reported. The two sides signed the lease on Monday, and the Hebei Sanyuan company will soon start production at the plants, which shut down on Sept. 12, according to the information office of the Shijiazhuang government, Hebei Province. The plants include four producing dairy products, one packing plant and milk cow farms.

Hong Kong lawmakers slammed HSBC for helping to sell Lehman Brothers bonds in the Chinese territory, questioning if Europe's largest bank should have done more to protect local investors from products that may be worthless in the aftermath of the Wall Street firm's collapse, the Associated Press reported. More than 40,000 Hong Kongers bought Lehman-backed investment products through banks, with the total outstanding value of the products estimated at HK$20.2 billion ($2.6 billion), according to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, which is the territory's de facto central bank.

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.