Onetime Asian corporate basket cases are seeking investors, and foreigners are lining up to buy their stocks and bonds, as hedge funds and institutional investors -- many sitting on cash piles -- scour the globe for new ways to deploy their money.

Leading the way: Family-owned conglomerates whose borrowing binges a decade ago gave them a starring role in the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998. Among the most recent is the family of Indonesian tycoon Eka Tjipta Widjaja. In 2001, one of its companies, Asia Pulp & Paper Co., was responsible for the largest emerging-market bond default in history: $13.9 billion. Investors are still trying to get their money back.

Nevertheless, last month another Widjaja company raised $540 million in a share placement on the Singapore stock exchange. After the placement, the Widjajas have a 48.5% stake in Singapore palm-oil company Golden-Agri Resources Ltd.

Visitors to Ownit Mortgage Solutions’ offices here are met by an abandoned reception desk and three dying potted plants that appear to have gone months without water.

How appropriate.

Ownit filed for bankruptcy protection late last year; since then, several companies that specialized in loans to people with weak, or subprime, credit have followed it into bankruptcy as the once-thriving business has withered on the vine. Gone are the lavish parties, the extravagant trips and the executive salaries and sales commissions that routinely topped a million dollars.

Lenders like New Century Financial and Ownit, many of them based in Southern California, have cut an estimated 12,000 mortgage jobs in California since the start of 2006, according to MortgageDaily.com, a trade publication. Nationally, 16,000 jobs have been lost.

What used to be a profitable partnership between subprime lenders and Wall Street banks has now degenerated into a cross-country blame game.