Shares of Kumho Industrial Co. will resume trading on the Seoul bourse Tuesday after a one day suspension amid market rumors that the financially embattled company may file for bankruptcy protection, the bourse operator said Monday, the Yonhap News Agency reported. "(Kumho Industrial) has not yet looked into applying for court management," the company said in a regulatory filing. The Korea Exchange called for the construction unit of Kumho Asiana Group to respond to the market speculation by 6:00 p.m. Monday, suspending its share trading before the stock market opened at 9:00 a.m.

Australian firms will find it easier to sell bonds in the U.S. after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s government said it would reverse a court decision that ranked shareholders equally with creditors, Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. said, BusinessWeek reported. Some U.S. private placement investors had put Australian bonds into the “too-hard basket” on concerns that the Sons of Gwalia ruling would lower their ranking in the event of a default, ANZ head of debt capital markets Brad Scott said in a Feb. 5 briefing to investors.

Group of Seven financial leaders agreed on the need to continue supporting their economies until financial recovery takes a firmer hold, but they have yet to reach a consensus on how to overhaul regulation of their financial sectors, The Wall Street Journal reported. French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said leaders were unable to make collective decisions on a U.S. proposal to limit proprietary trading at commercial banks, partly because financial institutions in countries including France, Germany and Japan aren't plagued by the same issues as U.S. banks.

Kingfisher Airlines Ltd has roped in US firm Seabury Aviation and Aerospace to advise on restructuring its operations and help the airline boost performance on the back of a reviving domestic industry, the Economic Times of India reported. Prakash Mirpuri, Vice President, Corporate Communications, told Retuers on Monday that fleet optimisation would be one of the areas the consultancy would advise Kingfisher on. The airline has a fleet size of 66 aircraft. Mirpuri did not say how soon Seabury would come up with its recommendations.

Salthouse Marine Ltd, a historic and respected New Zealand maker of motor yachts, is in the hands of a receiver and is closing with the loss of about 50 jobs, TVNZ reported. Receiver John Price of HPL Partners said he was called in last Thursday by a private investor. "I have closed the company and all of the staff have been laid off," Price said. Two boats near completion were being finished and a decision was yet to be made on a large project. He declined to put a figure on the size of the receivership.

Non-performing loans in China have risen into the “trillions of renminbi” because of poor lending practices, an insolvency lawyer said, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. “We work really closely with SASAC, the state-owned enterprise regulator in China, and there are literally trillions and trillions of renminbi of, frankly, defaulting loans already in China that no one is doing anything about,” Neil McDonald, a Hong Kong-based business restructuring and insolvency partner with Lovells LLP, said at an Asia-Pacific Loan Market Association conference yesterday.

The Australian sharemarket fell to a five-month low today, taking the market's loss this week to $30.83 billion, The Australian reported. The surprise 268 point plunge on the Dow Jones Index on Wall Street overnight created an instant negative lead for equities markets across the Asia Pacific region. In Australia, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 dropped 107.3 points to 4514.3 while the All Ordinaries was down 111.4 points to 4532.7.

BTA Bank, the second-largest bank in Kazakhstan by assets, filed for bankruptcy protection to shield itself from U.S. creditors while it restructures about $11.6 billion in debt, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. The Almaty-based bank listed both debt and assets of more than $1 billion in Chapter 15 documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Chapter 15 of the bankruptcy code is designed to block U.S. lawsuits against a foreign company with assets in the U.S. while it restructures in its home country. Most of BTA Bank’s U.S.

About 500 students from a Perth English language school that closed on Friday will be offered positions in other similar schools across the city, ABC Perth reported. Eight schools in Australia run by the GEOS Group of companies went into voluntary administration after failing to repay millions of dollars debt. At a meeting this afternoon students of St Mark's college in the Perth suburb of Highgate were told they would not have to pay if they needed to extend their student visas as a result of the school closure.

The decline and fall of Japan Airlines, once Asia's largest carrier, which was put under bankruptcy protection on Jan. 19, is a tale of intellectual, political and financial corruption on an almost unimaginable scale, The Vancouver Sun reported. It is also an illustration of the massive task facing the new Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama if it genuinely intends to try to dismantle the institutionally entrenched wrongheadedness that has overtaken Japan during more than 50 years of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).