Two paper manufacturers in Victoria - where paper helped build national businesses - are facing big problems, the Herald Sun reported. Yesterday about 300 workers at Australia's biggest envelope maker, Australian Envelopes, were made redundant after the Notting Hill-based company entered voluntary administration. A skeleton staff of about 30 have remained thanks largely to secured creditor ANZ's largesse, paying their wages.

Creditors in failed managed investment schemes would be given new rights and those in financially troubled schemes would have access to a new voluntary administration procedure under sweeping reforms proposed by the federal government's corporate law adviser, The Australian reported. A discussion paper issued yesterday by the Corporations and Markets Advisory Committee puts forward a number of proposals on the winding up of managed investment schemes.

Indian tycoon Pankaj Oswal has been blocked in an attempt to gain access to key documents related to the looming $1 billion sale of his controlling stake in Australia's biggest ammonia producer, Burrup Fertilisers, The Australian reported. Federal Court judge Michael Barker ruled yesterday that Mr Oswal, who left Australia last December as the ANZ Bank put Burrup Fertilisers into receivership, could not see the documents even though he remains a director of the company.

The federal government has promised significant regulatory reform of the insolvency industry but has rejected a Senate committee's recommendation to strip the Australian Securities & Investments Commission of its powers and create a single industry regulator, The Australian reported. A 120-page options paper for reform was unveiled yesterday by David Bradbury, parliamentary secretary to the Treasurer. The paper canvasses an overhaul of the profession's regulatory architecture to address concerns about misconduct and to improve value for money.

The federal government gave almost $300,000 worth of BER funding to private schools that rented their buildings, but went broke and were forced to close, The Australian reported. The Victorian Department of Education is now trying to recover $285,326 of schools building stimulus program money from two private schools that were operated in the state by Independent Colleges Australia. The colleges in Melton and Casey, connected to the bankrupt ABC Learning childcare group, went into voluntary administration last November after it could not pay its landlord.

Workers at Whitcoulls and Borders bookstores have been forced to sign new contracts under duress, unions say. New Zealand-owned James Pascoe Group bought 57 Whitcoulls and five Borders stores for an undisclosed sum last week after the Australian-based owner REDgroup put itself into voluntary administration in February, Radio New Zealand reported. James Pascoe Group is a retail business owned by David and Anne Norman that employs 9000 staff throughout New Zealand and Australia.

Australian home loan delinquencies jumped to the highest on record in the first quarter, driven by Christmas spending, a November interest rate increase, and recent natural disasters, Fitch Ratings said, Bloomberg reported. Mortgages more than 30 days overdue rose to 1.79 percent of the nation’s residential mortgage backed securities in the quarter ended March 31, from 1.37 percent in the previous three months, according to the London-based ratings firm. The number of “low-doc” loans more than 30 days late climbed to a record 6.74 percent from 5.7 percent, according to the report.

Failed agribusiness Timbercorp's former directors must today face a class-action suit filed against them in 2009 by more than 2000 investors in the Supreme Court, the Financial Standard reported. The investors have made allegations of conflicts of interest, breaches of directors' duties, misleading conduct and other violations of the Corporations Act following the collapse of the company which went into voluntary administration in 2009 with a net debt of more than $900 million.

In a blow to the Australian banking industry, ratings firm Moody's Investors Service downgraded the debt ratings of the country's four largest banks, citing their dependence on global lending markets, The Australian reported. A downgrade to Aa2 from their previous investment grade rating of Aa1 - one notch below Moody's top rating - will likely increase their costs even as worries grow that Australia's rising interest rates will crimp profitability. The four banks - ANZ, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac and National Australia Bank - dominate lending in Australia.

One of Australia's biggest fertiliser importers and sellers has become the latest company to go into administration after Switzerland's Western Gulf Advisory failed to deliver on financing, The Australian reported. WGA, which has been accused of taking millions of dollars from Australian companies in upfront fees for loans, is understood to have committed late last year to provide loans to the Interfert and Megafert fertiliser companies owned by South Australian businessmen Peter Evans and John Simper.