The global Stella tourism empire, which owns the Harvey World Travel chain and manages one in five Gold Coast holiday apartments, is in danger of collapse, threatening to cost banking giant UBS hundreds of millions of dollars. Private equity firm CVC Asia Pacific and UBS are understood to have lost up to $1 billion on Stella after buying two-thirds of the struggling giant last year from the now-collapsed high-risk Gold Coast financier MFS. Stella today denied that it had been advised to appoint receivers.

Listed Propertyfinance Group's principal subsidiary Propertyfinance Securities (PFS) has applied for a High Court injunction to temporarily halt its trustee Covenant Trustee Company from being able to appoint receivers, The New Zealand Herald reported. The injunction is being sought until PFS can hold a previously announced special meeting of stockholders.

Fiat will sign on Tuesday a letter of intent to buy a majority stake in General Motors' struggling Opel unit, the website of German magazine Spiegel said on Thursday, citing sources. GM is also in constructive talks with Austria's Magna Steyr, said the website, without saying where it obtained the information. The carmaker and Germany's economy ministry prefer a speedy agreement with Fiat, reported Spiegel Online, which has separate editorial staff from the magazine. It cited people close to the negotiations.

The Reserve Bank of Australia said the nation has joined its global peers in recession, but the long-term prospects for growth remain sound, Dow Jones Newswires reported. The statement by RBA Governor Glenn Stevens that Australia's economy is shrinking matches a similar message from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan, both of whom this week signaled Australia is headed for its first recession since the early 1990s.

The savings of about 5000 customers of New Zealand hamper company Mrs Christmas are in limbo after the business went into liquidation this morning, The National Business Review reported. In a shock move, Mrs Christmas withdrew its opposition to an application for liquidation filed by courier company Post Haste. This cleared the way for Associate Judge David Robinson to place the company in the hands of liquidators Damien Grant and Steven Khov of Waterstone Insolvency. “The evidence establishes that the defendant is indeed insolvent,” he said this morning.

A Tel Aviv court has appointed a receiver for the Israeli rough diamond trader Stelman, the Israel Diamond Exchange reported. Stelman’s bank debts are reportedly over $20 million. Stelman is a family-owned company with headquarters in Antwerp. According to reports, it is currently striving to reach debt settlements. Stelman was a major Diamond Trading Company (DTC) sightholder and a leading rough diamond trader. According to reports, aside from a debt of $5 million to Erez Daliyot, no Israeli diamond companies are owed money by Stelman.

Bankruptcy petitions in Hong Kong rose to a more than five-year high in March as the recession in the city deepened, government data showed Friday. The government said individuals and non-limited companies filed 1,872 bankruptcy petitions during the month, up from 1,500 in February, Dow Jones Newswires reported. March's figure was the highest since July 2003, when 1,899 bankruptcy petitions were filed as Hong Kong was recovering from the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome crisis. The data come amid signs of a further deterioration in local economic conditions.

All around Asia, leveraged finance professionals are reinventing themselves as restructuring specialists, a survival strategy amid layoffs and a slowed pipeline of splashy public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, The Wall Street Journal reported. Investment banks and law firms here also are rushing to put together teams for dealing with what bankers are predicting will be a wave of business in the region in the second half of this year. In the U.S. and Europe, bankruptcy and restructuring specialists tend to focus on those situations for entire careers.

China’s government is considering additional stimulus measures to boost consumption and bolster growth just as the nation shows more signs of recovering, Bloomberg reported. The government will issue some “guideline” policies and continue to use fiscal and taxation measures to spur an expansion, the official China Securities Journal reported today, citing Gao Huiqing, a researcher at the State Information Center as saying on April 11.

Kleenmaid’s 150 staff will lose their jobs after the Queensland-based upmarket kitchen and laundry appliance seller was put into voluntary administration, the Australian Associated Press reported. However, 25 employees will be asked to help with the administration process involving the company which had 20 outlets in NSW, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia and a $90 million turnover last year. A total of $27 million in customer deposits has also been lost, the administrator says.