A liquidation proceeding against Blue Chip’s sole remaining investment vehicle, Northern Crest, has failed, clearing the way for the investment company to migrate to Australia, The National Business Review reported. If the company moves to Australia there are concerns that investors of the failed Blue Chip schemes will not be able to pursue claims under New Zealand legislation. The Registrar of Companies had brought the liquidation proceeding against the ASX-listed but New Zealand-registered company on three grounds.

Rod Petricevic and Robert Roest, directors of the collapsed Bridgecorp Group of companies, are banned from directing or managing a company in New Zealand for five years, The National Business Review reported. The Deputy Registrar of Companies Peter Barker found the failings of Mr Petricevic and Mr Roest to be "serious and fundamental". The ban is separate from the criminal charges that Mr Petricevic and Mr Roest are also facing. Mr Barker said that nothing in his decisions altered any arguments made by Mr Petricevic or Mr Roest in any other proceedings.

New figures from both sides of the Tasman confirm that New Zealand exporters will continue to face hard times in their biggest market as the global economic crisis drags Australia into recession, The New Zealand Herald reported. New Zealand's transtasman trade suffered a 20.7 per cent hit in April - led by a halving in the value of crude oil - and the release of Australia's latest national accounts data tomorrow is expected to report a further contraction in gross domestic product for the March quarter.

One of the two trustee companies that presided over the vast majority of New Zealand finance company failures is hitting back at criticism of its role in the industry’s collapse, The National Business Review reported. Perpetual Trust says it’s not to blame for the company failures; instead, out of pocket investors should point the finger at dodgy directors and inadequate auditing by accountants. Perpetual and another firm Covenant, acted as trustees for almost all of the finance companies that have collapsed over the last three years.

Receivers appointed to two companies developing the first stage of Queenstown's $1 billion Kawarau Falls Station six-hotel development say it is too early to know whether the project can be completed, The National Business Review. Yesterday two companies associated with the development, Melview (Kawarau Falls Station) Investments Ltd and Melview (Kawarau Falls Station) Development Ltd, were put into receivership by Australian lender BOS International. Receiver Brendon Gibson of KordaMentha said, "it's too early for us to make any statements around that.

After bleeding money for years, 186 jobs have been cut at textile company Lane Walker Rudkin (LWR) as receivers try to sort out its dire financial state, The New Zealand Herald reported. LWR was last month placed in receivership and several of the company's unprofitable sites around the country have been targeted for closure or mergers. Changes involve 186 of the group's 470 staff being made redundant - 102 in Christchurch, 61 in Greytown, 19 in Pahiatua and four in Auckland. The receivers said there were no plans for redundancies at the Timaru plant.

Greg Olliver has escaped bankruptcy after a judge signed off on a proposal that will give his creditors, owed more than $90 million, a guaranteed return of less than half a cent in the dollar, The National Business Review reported. Financier St Laurence, owed $6.5 million, had opposed the arrangement and protested over a deal in which the $7 million Olliver family mansion, against which it held security, ended up being on-sold to entities associated with Mr Olliver’s wife Sarah.

Sharemarket operator NZX has called on New Zealand Shareholders' Association chairman Bruce Sheppard to publicly name the nine listed companies he thinks may have defaulted on debt payments, The National Business Review reported. Many companies do not disclose the terms of their loans, known as covenants, but Mr Sheppard warned yesterday that three weeks of research revealed nine companies were probably in breach of bank covenants in 2008 and a further 11 close to being in breach.

Lion Nathan is keeping quiet about its exposure to the collapse of New Zealand’s biggest pub chain. A group of companies under the CEA banner went into receivership last week. CEA owns 20 bars and clubs in Wellington and the South Island. It is 50% owned by Australian resident Jugeshinder Singh; the other half is split into three tranches, all of which are owned by companies associated with Australian private equity firm Investec Wentworth. Lion Nathan supplies all of CEA's venues with either beer, wine or spirits or a combination of these.

Efforts to create a harmonious trans-Tasman business environment have extended to company failures, with the Australian and New Zealand Governments agreeing to start work on streamlining insolvency regulations, The New Zealand Herald reported. Commerce Minister Simon Power and Australian Corporate Law Minister Nick Sherry have jointly announced a project to review cross-border insolvency procedures.