New Zealand

New Zealand’s High Court placed insurance firm CBL Insurance Ltd, the main subsidiary of CBL Corporation Ltd, in interim liquidation on Friday after a request from the country’s central bank, Reuters reported. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand regulates the country’s insurance sector and CBL disclosed earlier this month that the bank was reviewing the adequacy of the company’s reserves in its French construction insurance business.

New Zealand has blocked HNA Group’s $460 million purchase of a vehicle finance firm owned by Australia and New Zealand Banking Group in the latest in a series of setbacks around the world for the acquisitive Chinese conglomerate, Reuters reported. The proposed sale of UDC, New Zealand’s largest non-bank lender, was agreed with ANZ nearly a year ago and the bank had counted on the proceeds to boost its capital.

Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. full-year earnings rose 18 percent on growth in its domestic banking businesses and lower bad debts, even as margins narrowed, Bloomberg News reported. Unaudited cash profit, which excludes one-time items, rose to A$6.94 billion ($5.3 billion) in the 12 months ended Sept. 30, from A$5.9 billion a year earlier, the Melbourne-based bank said in a statement Thursday. That compares with the A$6.97 billion median estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

The New Zealand arm of British fashion retailer Topshop said on Thursday that it had been placed in receivership, just two years after the brand arrived in the country, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Top Retail Limited, which owns the licence to operate Topshop in New Zealand, said in an emailed statement that its two stores would stay open until a final decision was made on their ownership. Like its Australian counterpart, the chain has struggled amid increased competition and posted losses, its receiver firm McGrathNicol said in a statement.

Upmarket grocery chain Nosh has been placed in receivership, Companies Office records show. Damien Grant was appointed as a receiver on Friday. Before the receivership, staff were waiting to be paid wages and numerous creditors had ceased supplying the stores, The New Zealand Herald reported. Grant said it would be "very difficult" to get the stores back into trading. He was unable to provide detail on whether staff, creditors and landlords will be paid, saying he had yet to conduct a stocktake of the business.

PwC advised Property Ventures (PVL) on ways to continue trading when by some accounts it was insolvent while at the same time giving David Henderson's failed property development company a clean bill of health as statutory auditor, the liquidators allege, The New Zealand Herald reported. Liquidator Robert Walker alleges that if not for PwC, the company would have been wound up in 2007, allowing loans to be called in, asset sales and a more orderly liquidation. Instead it trundled on until 2010, when it failed owing $69 million and was later put into liquidation.

Liquidators have recovered a further $35,000 from clients who go more money out than they put into an alleged Ponzi scheme. A Christchurch forex firm, which traded as BlackfortFX, has been in receivership since May 2015 after the Financial Markets Authority froze its assets and it was put into liquidation shortly after, The New Zealand Herald reported. Liquidators say the company owes about 1110 clients about $7 million and its sole director, Jimmie Kevin McNicholl, has been charged with obtaining by deception Serious Fraud Office.

The number of companies listed on the New Zealand sharemarket will continue to shrink this year, according a forecast on the capital markets. Law firm Chapman Tripp has released a trends and insights report on New Zealand's Equity Markets and is predicting more departures from the NZX and just three new companies to list - a number in line with previous years, The New Zealand Herald reported.

The receivers of Pumpkin Patch will have all stores closed by mid-February after they couldn't entice a buyer for the failed children's wear chain, which traded through the traditionally busy holiday period, The New Zealand Herald reported. Sixty-eight stores employing 560 people will close by Jan. 31, and the remaining 56 stores across New Zealand and Australia will shut as and when stock is sold, through the middle of next month, receiver Neale Jackson of KordaMentha said in a statement. Pumpkin Patch staff at head office will lose their jobs over the coming weeks.

Pumpkin Patch owes its bank nearly $60 million and its unsecured creditors another $13.2m. A receivers' report by Brendon Gibson and Neale Jackson of KordaMentha shows the children's clothing company, which was put into receivership in October, owed $59.5m, chiefly to the ANZ. Preferred creditors, largely the 1600 staff it employed in the lead-up to its receivership, were still owed $1.5m. Inland Revenue had not submitted a claim yet. It was too early to say whether the $13.2m owed to unsecured creditors could be retrieved, the report said.