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.

The first meeting of creditors to Clive Peeters Ltd is expected no later than May 28 after the discount appliance retail was placed into voluntary administration by its banker National Australia Bank Ltd (NAB), the Business Spectator reported on an Australian Associated Press story. The move comes just two weeks after Clive Peeters warned that deteriorating sales would lead to four months of operating losses. McGrathNicol was appointed voluntary administrators for the company and its controlled entities on Wednesday after executives from Clive Peeters met NAB officials.

A company which manages investment schemes in the Great Southern and around Western Australia has gone into administration, ABC News reported. Rewards Group Limited manages plantations of native Sandalwood near Narrogin and stone fruit and grapefruit orchards in Dandaragan and Kununurra. The company has been unable to pay debt amounting to tens-of-millions-of-dollars and is in the process of defending a multi-million dollar law suit from former Westpoint director Richard Beck. It's the fourth managed investment scheme in Australia to collapse in the past 18 months.

Transurban Group said Monday that its Canadian pension fund shareholders are considering whether or not to lodge a revised takeover bid for Lane Cove Tunnel after it agreed to pay 630.5 million Australian dollars (US$569.4 million) for the tollroad operator, The Wall Street Journal reported.