Cing, developer of well-known video game titles including Little King’s Story, Another Code (Trace Memory), Monster Rancher, and Hotel Dusk, has filed for bankruptcy due to mounting debts it could not pay, Geek.com reported. The small Japanese developer only had around 30 staff, but managed to produce a number of memorable games on Nintendo’s platforms. Its debts were relatively small, standing at just $2.9 million, but clearly that was too much for such a small company to handle, and now it looks as though it will be forced to close.

Everyone agrees China is in the middle of a spectacular real estate boom. The question is whether it is in the middle of a rapidly growing real estate bubble, The New York Times reported. When other recent booms collapsed — in the United States, for instance — they depressed entire economies. In China’s case, a bursting bubble could affect much of the world. China is the fastest-growing large economy and, so far, a main engine pulling the world out of recession. Beijing is clearly concerned.

A High Court bid by Fletcher Construction to bankrupt New Zealand property developer Nigel McKenna was this morning adjourned by Associate Judge Jeremy Doogue for a hearing on May 6, The National Business Review reported. Mr McKenna’s lawyer John Billington QC told NBR outside the court that Mr McKenna had committed no acts of bankruptcy. McKenna’s Melview Featherston Street company was placed in receivership and liquidation in December after it skipped court ordered payments to Fletcher Construction for building the Wellington Holiday Inn.

The New Zealand company behind stages two and three of Queenstown’s ambitious hotel/apartment development, Kawarau Falls Station, has been placed in receivership, Scene.co.nz reported. Grant Thornton New Zealand Ltd’s Tim Downes and Richard Simpson were appointed receivers and managers of Peninsula Road Ltd on Tuesday this week. The receivership is another blow for Peninsula Road shareholder/director and high-profile Auckland developer Nigel McKenna.

Japan Airlines Corp plans to reduce its work force by 2,700, or about 5 percent, by offering early retirement, the Nikkei business daily reported. JAL, which employs about 51,800 groupwide, aims to let go 1,700 employees at its core unit, Japan Airlines International Co, and the rest at other group firms, the paper said. The carrier, which did not disclose how much severance pay early retirees are to receive, will start with 400 flight crew and ground staff managers, the Nikkei said.

American International Group Inc. is in talks to sell a Hong Kong life insurance division to Prudential Plc for more than $35 billion, marking AIG’s largest asset sale since U.S. taxpayers bailed out the company in 2008, people briefed on the matter said, Bloomberg reported. AIG and Prudential aim to reach an agreement to sell American International Assurance Co. in coming days, although the talks could always collapse, the people said, declining to be identified because the matter is private.

China's central bank favors legalizing some gray-area private lenders and removing ceilings on interest rates, an official said Thursday, changes that would make it easier for the nation's small and private businesses to get loans, The Wall Street Journal reported. The People's Bank of China plans to submit proposals for the regulatory changes to the State Council, or cabinet, as soon as possible, said Zhou Xuedong, director general of the central bank's law and regulation department.

British Seafood, the fish importer and distributor part-owned by 3i Group (III.L), has gone into administration, wiping out gains made by the private equity firm's sale of healthcare company Ambea, Reuters reported. Tough conditions in financial markets have caused some banks to withdraw trade credit, choking the supply of working capital necessary for businesses like British Seafood. "It was a growing business and a good business," said a spokesperson for 3i, which bought a 28.5 percent stake in British Seafood in December 2007.

Two brothers' dreams of owning and running a large scale sheep and beef farming operation in New Zealand’s Central North Island have seen their ambitions disappear - with the announcement of a receivership sale of their sizeable landholdings, Voxy reported. Pohonui farm and Rosemerryn farm - both west of Taihape - were purchased only a few years ago when the farming sector was booming.

Strong results in a Hong Kong government land auction are the latest sign that the city's real-estate market is surging higher after a brief lull, as government officials here and elsewhere in the region grapple with how to cool off overheating property prices, The Wall Street Journal reported. On Monday, blue-chip developer Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd. agreed to pay 3.37 billion Hong Kong dollars (US$434 million) bid for a 130,000-square-foot site in the suburbs of Hong Kong.