Headlines

Russian businessman Vladimir Kogan has acquired 82 percent of Uralsib Bank's shares as part of a central bank plan to avert bankruptcy at the top-30 Russian lender, the bank said on Wednesday. The Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) will also give Uralsib loans for 14 billion roubles ($224 million) for six years and 67 billion roubles ($1 billion) for 10 years to help improve its financial position, the state agency said. Uralsib is Russia's 26th largest bank by assets, according to an Interfax ranking, and it is the biggest bank to be saved with central bank funds since Bank of Moscow in 2011.

India's government on Wednesday published long-awaited proposals to overhaul an outdated and overburdened bankruptcy process, calling for public comment on what could become the country's first unified bankruptcy code. The proposed bill aims to dramatically speed up decisions on whether to save or liquidate ailing companies, in a move to curb asset stripping and ensure higher recovery rates for creditors - both key to fostering a modern credit market and increased investment in India.

TPK Holding Co (宸鴻), a major supplier of touchpanels for Apple Inc’s iPhone 6S and Watch, yesterday reported a quarterly loss of NT$19.39 billion (US$595 million) due to massive asset impairments, The Taipei Times reported. The company said it is undertaking a drastic restructuring as lackluster demand for touchscreen notebook computers has affected its factory utilization rate, leaving some of its equipment idle. TPK posted NT$18.97 billion in impaired assets last month, mainly from unprofitable and idled equipment.

The chief financial regulator said Wednesday that he will help creditors speed up restructuring of steel, petrochemical and shipping companies struggling to stay afloat after being hit hard by low demand in global markets, The Korea Times reported. Financial Services Commission Chairman Yim Jong-yong said he will support companies with potential to recover by injecting fresh money while kicking out corporations which are not sustainable. "We will discuss with other government agencies ways to strengthen competitiveness in the fields and directions for restructuring.

Breakfast cereal company Kellogg last year routed €1.3 billion of sales from the UK and other parts of Europe through an Irish unit, the Irish Times reported. However, Dublin-registered Kellogg Europe Trading (KET), which is owned by a Luxembourg entity, paid no corporation tax here because its profits were wiped out by loans to another group company. KET made an operating profit but the company was pushed into the red by the interest on the €1.7 billion loans, and it ended up making a loss of €87.5 million.

The Baha Mar resort’s Chinese lender has decided to foreclose on the $3.5 billion resort in the Bahamas and has appointed a receiver to bring the delayed project to completion, roughly six weeks after it was thrown out of bankruptcy protection in the U.S. The move by the Export-Import Bank of China, which received Bahamian court approval to name Deloitte to the receiver role, comes a few weeks after some 2,000 employees in the Bahamas lost their jobs at the partially completed resort at the request of court-appointed liquidators.

Russia's central bank is considering relaxing rules for banks that lent to troubled airline Transaero, a senior central banker said on Tuesday, a day after a deal to buy a controlling stake in the airline fell through, Reuters reported. Alexei Simanovsky, first deputy governor of the central bank, told reporters that the bank was considering extending the time period over which banks had to create loan-loss provisions, thereby easing pressure on their balance sheets. "We are thinking that it could be an extension on creating reserves," Simanovsky said.

Kazakhstan is set to embark upon its most ambitious privatisation plan since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, offering stakes in its largest state-owned enterprises to international investors in preparation for eventual stock market flotations, officials told the Financial Times on Tuesday. The move coincides with a warning from Nursultan Nazarbayev, president, that the world faces “economic turbulence” that for many emerging market countries could dwarf the impact of the global financial crisis of 2008-09.

A softening in the United Arab Emirates' economy has led to a surge in small and medium-sized businesses defaulting on debt, dragging on banks' performance and highlighting the need for a new bankruptcy law, Reuters reported. In a country where a bounced cheque risks landing the issuer in jail, there have been hundreds of recent cases of expatriate business owners fleeing the country, or "skipping", with unpaid debts, banking sources say. Others who remain have defaulted on debt and in some cases been arrested.

China’s top leader sent the strongest signal yet that the government expects the world’s second-largest economy to shift to a slower pace, suggesting Beijing could tolerate growth as low as 6.5%, The Wall Street Journal reported. President Xi Jinping warned that China’s economy faces domestic and global uncertainties, as his government began Tuesday to reveal details of its next five-year plan via China’s official Xinhua News Agency.