New Zealand

Millionaire property magnates the Chow brothers have been forced to buy a fire services company to protect a bank loan they bought earlier this year, Business Day reported. Michael and John Chow, with their business partner Clint Webber, made a quick decision to buy AFS Total Fire Protection after the Inland Revenue Department threatened to put the company into liquidation on Friday. AFS Total Fire Protection designs, builds and installs fire protection systems to making sure building complies with fire regulations.

Software company Wynyard Group has been put in voluntary administration. KordaMentha partners Neale Jackson and Grant Graham have been appointed administrators of the company, which creates security software for use by companies and law enforcement agencies. It's been a difficult year for Wynyard, with its board warning in August that the company's future was in question and signalling uncertainty underlying its assumptions about cash-flow and future sales.

Overseas graduates declaring themselves penniless are among the 483 debtors whose $18 million in students loans have been wiped by bankruptcies, Stuff.co.nz reported. Inland Revenue has revealed the latest figures as the amount owed by student loan defaulters tips over the $1 billion mark. The 10 biggest overseas debtors owe more than $300,000 each. Some are dying in debt. Ministry of Education figures show that, in the year to June 2015, $19m of student loan debt was written off because of the death of the borrower. That compared with $16m written off because of bankruptcy.

A plan to regulate the insolvency sector and shut down unscrupulous operators is being welcomed by an industry body, Radio New Zealand reported. The government has released the first part of a review into insolvency laws, which recommends licensing for practitioners and steps to improve protection for creditors in voluntary liquidations. The working group's report said current regulation fell short of ensuring creditors could have confidence that practitioners handling corporate insolvency are qualified and bound by an acceptable code of ethics.

New Zealand's insolvency practitioners look likely to face a new licensing regime after a report to Commerce Minister Paul Goldsmith found that gaps in existing rules enable dishonesty and incompetence, The New Zealand Herald reported. The public has until Oct. 7 to make submissions on a review of insolvency law, which Goldsmith says is primarily to find what the minimum level of entry should be for the specialists tasked with winding down companies.

Woosh Wireless' creditors, thought to be owed almost $13 million, have voted to put the troubled internet provider into liquidation, The New Zealand Herald reported. The business was founded in 1999 and has burned through more than $100 million since that time. Grappling with the challenge of its ageing technology, the company had been winding down some of its operations. It sold about 10,000 of its customers to Slingshot last year and still had about 2000 on its books. After trading unprofitably, two Woosh companies were put into voluntary administration in May.

Electronics retailer Dick Smith has been put into receivership after its banks refused to keep propping it up following poor sales. The company, which has nearly 400 stores in Australia and New Zealand, said in August it was carrying too much of the wrong type of goods and that, combined with soft consumer demand, meant it was being forced to cut its margins to keep afloat. Since then it has twice warned that it wouldn't make its earnings forecasts - it slashed prices and had big pre-Christmas bargain sales.

State owned miner Solid Energy faces a court action to cancel its scheme to repay creditors, Stuff.co.nz reported. Cargill International has filed in the High Court for termination of Solid's Energy's scheme to pay back trading creditors, banks and bondholders. Solid Energy was in partnership with Cargill at the Spring Creek mine on the West Coast from 2007 to 2012, when a crash in world coal prices started Solid Energy's slide into voluntary administration. Cargill said it lost US$42.4 million ($63.5m) in the mine and undelivered volumes of coal from the Spring Creek Mining Company.

State owned enterprise minister Todd McClay says Landcorp won't turn a profit for "the next few years" and is again foreshadowing land sales, Stuff.co.nz reported. Record low dairy prices saw profits plunge by $25m, Landcorp said Thursday. It's got debts of around $250 million and is locked into an expensive dairy conversion project of 26,000 hectares at Wairakei, near Taupo. McClay says there will be no taxpayer-funded bailout for the state-owner farmer. And he rejects Labour's comparisons with troubled coal company Solid Energy, which is in voluntary administration.

Genesis Energy will cancel its coal supply agreement with Solid Energy from October using a clause triggered by the coal mining company's voluntary administration, Stuff.co.nz reported. The move is a blow for the country's largest coal miner, Solid Energy, as it prepares for a meeting next month in which debtors will be asked to consider a two-and-a-half year repayment halt while the company is organised for sale. In March, Solid Energy was negotiating $320 million debt with banks, and was last week placed into voluntary administration in a last ditch attempt to save the company.