Queensland property franchise Go Gecko has been placed into voluntary administration, but the company says its franchisees will be unaffected by the move, StartupSmart reported. Go Gecko was founded in 2006 by Geoff Doyle and operates more than 50 outlets across the country, describing itself as the “pioneers of capped commission real estate”. It’s been revealed the Brisbane-based company called in administrators on Tuesday, highlighting the tough conditions plaguing the property market.

The boom that turned Turkey into Europe’s fastest-growing economy may be imperiled by the debt crisis in neighboring Greece, the continent’s worst performer, Bloomberg reported. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed Turkey’s 11 percent first-quarter expansion as “magnificent” on June 30. It hasn’t prevented the lira from sliding to a two-year low, as the country’s trade deficit widens on surging demand for imports. Turkey needs increasing flows of cash to finance the gap -- just as investors take alarm at the risk of default in Greece, where output shrank 5.5 percent.

National has attacked Labour’s tax plan, saying it would leave a huge hole in New Zealand taxpayers’ finances over the next 15 years and add $18.5 billion dollars to net Crown debt, The National Business Review reported. Labour recently announced its plan to introduce a Capital Gains Tax and hike the top tax rate to 39% while taking GST off fresh fruit and vegetables and making the first $5000 of income tax-free.

When China announced a flagship program to make its currency more international in the summer of 2009, it cited "the growing call" from Chinese trading partners to use the yuan in cross-border transactions. More than a year later, the People's Bank of China touted the program as a "breakthrough," citing a surge in the amount of trade in the currency. Not everything went according to plan, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The teetering retail empire Austexx, one-time owners of the Direct Factory Outlet shopping centre in Sydney, is again in crisis with receivers called in to take control of its Spencer Street property in Melbourne over a debt of up to $360 million, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. In another hammer blow for the troubled group, the financier BOS International appointed Craig Shepard and Leanne Chesser of KordaMentha receivers over two companies that own the struggling shopping centre above Southern Cross station.

China has resumed drafting a bankruptcy law for banks, an effort that had been suspended during the global financial crisis, the news service Caixin reported on Thursday. China's banking regulator is in the preliminary stages of drafting such a law and is studying legislation in developed countries, Caixin quoted a source at the China Banking Regulatory Commission as saying, Reuters reported.

The Bank of Korea (BOK) kept the country’s policy rate unchanged at 3.25 percent despite high inflation, as the heightened uncertainty surrounding European financial troubles dissuaded rate setters from hiking, The Korea Times reported. The decision by the central bank’s monetary policy committee Thursday had been widely expected and BOK Governor Kim Choong-soo warned against raising interest rates too quickly, insisting that the country has already suffered the worst of the inflationary pressures.

China's central bank said risks from the country's local government financing vehicles are controllable, underscoring Beijing's effort to dispel growing concerns about potential default risks associated with local government debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. The statement released late Monday by the People's Bank of China came after the National Audit Office rejected criticism of its estimate of local government debt, saying its assessment was accurate and made independently.

An unidentified bondholder last week called for an event of default on Gajah Tunggal's outstanding dollar bonds, raising the possibility of another debt restructuring for the Indonesian tyre maker, Reuters reported on an International Financing Review story. Gajah Tunggal has not defaulted on its interest payments, but one unnamed bondholder has claimed that a Rp42bn (US$4.9m) dividend payment on June 30 constituted a technical breach of covenants on its US$435m due 2014 paper.

The directors of failed Nathans Finance have been found guilty of lying to investors in a prospectus, investment statement and two advertisements - when Nathans sought $100 million from investors 2006, The National Business Review reported. But the three directors - Mervyn Ian Doolan, Kenneth Roger Moses and Donald Menzies Young - were found not guilty on a charge arising out of a letter to potential investors dated July 12, 2007, on the basis the letter did not meet the statutory definition of "advertisement".