Can Japan’s new leaders persuade their fellow citizens to stop hoarding money and thus ease one of the biggest structural problems plaguing the world’s second-largest economy? Democratic party policymakers fresh from their historic general election victory over Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democrats say they are determined to achieve an economic rebalancing that has eluded governments since the 1980s.

Australian assembler and distributor, TodayTech, has gone into voluntary administration three months after losing a direct supplier relationship with key vendor partner, Intel. Rob Whitton of William Buck Chartered Accountants was appointed administrator by TodayTech’s directors. He said the business was likely to close in the next week, ARN reported. Headquartered in Sydney, TodayTech also maintains offices across Australia and has about 30 employees. Read more.

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar, BusinessWeek reported.

Japanese banks’ bad loans won’t be driven higher by a proposed moratorium on debt payments by struggling small companies, said Financial Services Minister Shizuka Kamei. Lenders won’t have to classify loans encompassed by the plan as non-performing, Kamei, 72, said in an interview yesterday at his office in Tokyo. That means they won’t be forced to boost provisions when borrowers postpone repayments of interest or principal, he said. At the same time, Kamei vowed to push banks to extend more credit to small businesses after bankruptcies hit a six-year high in Japan, Bloomberg reported.

The Kuwait Islamic investment firm that owns half of British luxury car maker Aston Martin says it has appointed a chief officer to restructure its debts, BusinessWeek reported. The Investment Dar said in an announcement Sunday, the new manager, Mike Grant, brings to the company over 20 years of experience. The company is one of several Kuwaiti banks and investment houses to run into trouble as the global economic meltdown hammered this small oil-rich state in the Gulf.

China's central bank will soon announce bank loan statistics for September, and there have already been press reports that new lending may be increasing again after a lull in July and August, The Wall Street Journal reported. On top of record new lending in the first half of the year, despite a global slowdown, this is provoking new fears of another nonperforming loan crisis on the horizon. The dilemma for Chinese policy makers will be how to deal with that problem.

Former Blue Chip boss Mark Bryers is now a bankrupt, The New Zealand Herald reported. By his own estimation, the founder of the failed investment scheme owes a long list of creditors $173 million. Lawyers representing eight of those creditors, collectively owed $85 million, lined up before Associate Judge David Robinson in the High Court at Auckland yesterday to hear the bankruptcy adjudication. Bryers had made an eleventh hour attempt to have the proceedings adjourned by offering a proposal for repaying his debts.

Japan's new bank regulator is softening its stance on a proposed moratorium on loan repayments by small business and individuals, in the latest sign that the country's new leadership is adjusting its rhetoric to the reality of government, The Wall Street Journal reported. Soon after Japan's new government was formed last month, the banking and postal-services minister, Shizuka Kamei, called for a three-year grace period on debt repayments to help small businesses and individuals cope with tough economic conditions. Bankers in Tokyo complain that Mr.

Luxury New Zealand hotel and spa Hotel du Vin has been sold to Dilworth School for an undisclosed figure and is to be converted into a rural campus, The New Zealand Herald reported. The private boys' school yesterday revealed it was the winning bidder in a tender process for the hotel, which was placed in receivership in July after suffering from declining guest numbers. Dilworth Trust Board chairman Derek Firth said it would reconfigure the hotel and spa buildings to make them suitable for school use and expected to open the campus in 2012.

Timbercorp’s forestry assets have been sold for about $345 million to Australian Bluegum Plantations, a wholly owned subsidiary of US timber investment fund Global Forest Partners, The Australian reported. The company intends to set up its headquarters in the Green Triangle region of Victoria and South Australia, and in southwest Western Australia and retain the employees currently working for Timbercorp's forestry business. About $200 million of the sale proceeds have been allocated to about 10,000 so-called growers who invested in Timbercorp's woodlots.