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.

Tomato processing company Cedenco Foods Australia has been placed into receivership but its processing facility will operate as usual, the Brisbane Times reported. This comes after Cedenco Foods in New Zealand was placed in receivership. The company continues to trade pending a sale of the business. ANZ Banking Group NZ subsidiary, ANZ National Bank, said on Monday that it had put receivers into Cedenco Foods. Announcing the move, ANZ National said it had committed seasonal funding to the receivers to allow Cedenco to continue to trade.

Hopes have soared that huge amounts of water from Australia's most famous cotton farm could return to the Murray Darling river system, after administrators were appointed to handle the affairs of Queensland's Cubbie Station, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. After months of trying to sell the huge station and its water entitlement to governments and agricultural businesses, Cubbie chairman Keith De Lacy said the company would be handed to administrators today. ''In the end it was drought that beat us,'' he said.

National Australia Bank Ltd., the country’s biggest corporate lender, turned to its first loss in at least nine years after charges for bad debts climbed and it set aside funds for a tax settlement in New Zealand, Bloomberg reported. The net loss of A$75 million ($69 million) in the second half ended Sept. 30 compared with a profit of A$1.85 billion in the year-earlier period, the Melbourne-based bank said in a statement today. Cash earnings, which strip out one-time items, rose 8 percent to A$1.81 billion.