Australia

About 500 students from a Perth English language school that closed on Friday will be offered positions in other similar schools across the city, ABC Perth reported. Eight schools in Australia run by the GEOS Group of companies went into voluntary administration after failing to repay millions of dollars debt. At a meeting this afternoon students of St Mark's college in the Perth suburb of Highgate were told they would not have to pay if they needed to extend their student visas as a result of the school closure.

Eight English language schools operated in Australia by the GEOS group have gone into voluntary administration, leaving about 2300 foreign students unsure of their future, The Sydney Morning Herald reported on an Australian Associated Press story. Justin Walsh and Adam Nikitins of Ernst & Young have been appointed administrators to nine companies operating the schools in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Cairns. They have about 390 employees and international students from a number of different countries.

The owner and operator of Sydney's Lane Cove Tunnel and the Military Road E-Ramp, Connector Motorways Pty Ltd, has been placed in receivership, The Sydney Morning Herald reported on an Australian Associated Press story. Martin Madden and David Merryweather of corporate recovery services provider KordaMentha said they had been appointed receivers and managers to Connector on Wednesday by the security trustee, BTA Institutional Services Australia Ltd. "The objective of the receivers is to put the tunnel assets on a firm financial footing," Mr Madden said.

Proposed changes to insolvency laws will put Australia on equal footing with other countries in restructuring ailing companies, prevent higher funding costs and provide greater certainty in liquidations, according to experts, The Australian reported. Company directors will be the big winners from the proposed new laws, announced by Corporate Law Minister Chris Bowen yesterday, by protecting them from legal claims while trying to restructure a financially troubled company.

Foreign investors were a major force in New York’s real estate boom of the last decade, with families and companies from Dubai to Australia swallowing weekend apartments and Midtown office towers. In 2007, the roster of international investors came to include a British firm, Dawnay Day, whose executives had a splashy reputation for spending millions on fine art and yachts, The New York Times reported. The efforts [to regentrify East Harlem neighborhoods], though, didn’t get far before the recession spread across the globe and Dawnay Day went bust.

The Rudd government will provide $15 million in taxpayer funds for a loan to help fund a charitable takeover of the nation's biggest childcare chain, the collapsed ABC Learning group, The Australian reported. A dozen philanthropists -- including Robin Crawford, a founding director of Macquarie Bank, Seek founder and BRW Young Rich-lister Matthew Rockman, and former Microsoft boss Daniel Petre -- also lent cash to the GoodStart consortium.

A second wave of corporate collapses is still causing headaches for Australia’s banks even after many declared the worst was behind them on the bad-debt front, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Cubbie Station, a giant cotton farm in Queensland's south-west, went into voluntary administration last month owing an estimated $320 million, including $227 million to National Australia Bank. Suncorp is believed to also have a significant exposure.

The future of the Unanderra-based Wideform Group of Companies is up in the air with suggestions that a major bank lender may be pulling back support for the business, the Illawarra Mercury reported. The Australian Financial Review (AFR) today reported that the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group was believed to have sought to facilitate a process whereby the business would go into voluntary administration and a new owner would be found.

Authorities in Britain and Australia have requested information from UBS after the Swiss bank agreed in August to disclose some 4,450 client names to settle a U.S. tax case, the bank confirmed on Sunday, Reuters reported. UBS said in a note to its third-quarter financial statement, published last week, that tax and regulatory authorities in a number of jurisdictions had requested information on cross-border wealth management services provided by UBS and other banks.

The closure of four schools in Australia has left at least 400 Chinese students high and dry, prompting China's consulate in Sydney to caution against studying in the land down under, China Daily reported. Meridian International was one of four schools under the Global Campus Management Group in Sydney and Melbourne to be closed on Nov 5 after the group failed to repay debts. There were approximately 400 Chinese students at Meridian International, according to China's consulate general in Sydney in a statement over the weekend.