Queensland sorghum growers have expressed relief at news the Dalby Bio-refinery will continue to operate, despite it being placed into the control of receivers last Friday. The Bio-refinery, Australia's first grains to ethanol refinery, was placed into voluntary administration last Friday with debts of $80 million, Queensland Country Life reported. Receiver managers Ernst and Young have indicated the plant will continue to trade as normal as assessments are made about the viability of the existing business and whether it will be prepared for sale.

New investors may be asked to submit bids for the control of financially-stricken southern Queensland border irrigation giant, Cubbie Station, Stock & Land reported. A creditors meeting in South West Queensland at St George this week failed to give the green light to either of the two foreign parties currently vying for control of debt-burdened Cubbie, which farms 93,000 hectares on the Lower Balonne floodplain.

Australia’s small listed companies are still struggling to raise finance in the wake of the global financial crisis, according to fund manager Roger Sharp, The Australian reported. "Anybody who says the banking crisis is over doesn't understand how tight the market is and how hard it in for small companies, even listed companies, to raise debt,” he said. Companies that succeed in securing a loan can pay 6 per cent and more above cash rates, according to Reserve Bank statistics.

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.