Australia

The Securities Commission is warning Strategic Finance investors to be "wary" of a 5c in the dollar offer for their debentures in the collapsed finance company, The National Business Review reported. Australian company Stock and Share Trading Company Pty Ltd initially offered investors 20c in the dollar but has since come back with the much lower 5c. The same company has also attempted to entice St Laurence debenture holders with an 8c in the dollar deal, having initially offered 20c.

FreightLink, which was forced into voluntary administration in 2008 after several attempts to sell the railway has been sold to Genesee and Wyoming for $334 million. The sale will take about three months to finalise, LogisticsWeek reported. FreightLink operates six freight services per week between the South Australian and Northern Territory capitals, carrying 3.8 million tonnes of goods annually. Genesse and Wyoming bought the Australian National Railway’s South Australian freight operations several years ago.

The former Fortescue Metals chairman Gordon Toll may feel slightly conflicted next week when shareholders of Compass Resources vote on a proposed recapitalisation of the miner. It is never easy being a major creditor and chairman of a former sharemarket darling that has been placed into voluntary administration, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. It is even harder when you ask shareholders of a company once worth $770 million to vote on a deed of company arrangement under which their stake will be diluted to 5 per cent, in return for cancelling out $73 million of debts.

Listed agricultural property investment company ARK Fund has been put into voluntary administration, following the path of associated private entity Rewards Group, Western Australia Business News reported. ARK Fund advised the ASX today that Kim Strickland and David Hunt of WA Insolvency Solutions had been appointed after National Australia Bank ended an arrangement that had bought the property group time to restructure via a proposed merger with a recapitalised Rewards Group.

ABC Learning creditors have voted to wind up the failed childcare group following the longest administration in Australian corporate history, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Fifteen people attended today's creditors' meeting in Brisbane to decide on the company's liquidation and to receive a report from administrators. The decision to liquidate the group comes 19 months after the once-profitable business empire started by Eddy Groves was placed into voluntary administration. ABC Learning was at one stage the biggest listed childcare operator in the world.

Australian shopping mall giant Westfield Group on Thursday ruled out a bid for General Growth Properties Inc., instead preferring to cherry pick individual assets its U.S. rival may put on the market, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. With the retail sector looking up in its main markets and a robust balance sheet boasting almost $6.59 billion liquidity, Westfield - the world's biggest owner of shopping centers by value - decided against entering a bidding war for General Growth, which is under U.S. bankruptcy protection.

Australian education and childcare services provider A.B.C. Learning Centres Ltd filed for bankruptcy in a Delaware court Wednesday, more than 18 months after the company went into administration in Australia, Reuters reported. The filing comes after an Arizona jury ruled against the company earlier this month in a lawsuit over certain development contracts and ordered it to pay more than $47 million in damages to RCS Capital Development LLC. The company filed under Chapter 15 of U.S. bankruptcy law, which deals with cases involving more than one country and allows U.S.

The former chief financial officer of an Australian disability employment group has told a court he and his wife spent tens of thousands of dollars on the group's credit cards because he thought there was no limit to a tax exemption it received as a benevolent organisation, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Mustafa Koraiem, of Mosman, was overseeing the $25 million annual turnover of Cumberland Industries when he was approving his wife's and his own private expenses as salary sacrifices through the company's accounts, the Federal Court has heard.

Professionals and people on high incomes are declaring bankruptcy faster than ever before in Australia, according to a study that reveals levels have risen by more than a third in the past four years, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Analysing the nation's cases over the past decade, the report shatters the myth that most people who file for bankruptcy are either the chronically poor who have no other options or the Alan Bond-style wealthy declaring complete financial free-fall.

Australia’s planned 40 percent tax on mining profits has set a benchmark for other countries weighing higher levies, reducing earnings forecasts for BHP Billiton Ltd. and Rio Tinto Group and the attraction of mining stocks, Bloomberg reported. Mining companies’ earnings may be cut by almost a third when the tax starts in 2012, Moody’s Investors Services said this week. The tax would be broadly credit negative for the sector and raise uncertainty for some companies over the short- to-medium term, Moody’s said this month.