While there are many challenges that come with building a house, it probably can’t get much worse than hearing your builder has gone bankrupt and that work to your home has stopped, effective immediately.

The so-called ‘profitless building boom’, triggered by the COVID pandemic, is still playing out in the Australia construction sector, seeing thousands of home builders collapse with more still to come, according to industry watchers. If you’re signing a contract to build your own home, it’s important to know what to do if it happens to you.

Why are builders going bankrupt?

Australia’s construction industry is still feeling the effects of the COVID-era ‘perfect storm’ that has sent thousands of builders, and associated trades, to the…

IE CA 3 Holdings Ltd and IE CA 4 Holdings Ltd
(Companies) were two Canadian registered companies whose directors
were located outside of Canada. The Companies’ parent company,
Iris Energy Limited (Iris), was listed on NASDAQ and had its
registered office in Melbourne and principal place of business in
Sydney, with three of its six directors located in New South
Wales.

In November 2022, the Companies defaulted on certain payment
obligations. After failed attempts at restructuring, the Supreme
Court of British Columbia (BC Supreme Court)
appointed receivers over the Companies’ property
(Canadian Receivers).

The BC Supreme Court authorised the Canadian Receivers to assign
the Companies into a Canadian bankruptcy process,…

• President-elect Donald Trump is unlikely to continue many of Biden’s student-debt relief efforts.
• Borrowers are still waiting for a final court decision on the SAVE student-loan repayment plan.
• Even if the plan survives the courts, Trump and GOP lawmakers could take steps to rein in relief.

During his two terms as president, Joe Biden has used various programs to cancel $175 billion in student debt for nearly 5 million borrowers. Those efforts will likely fizzle out over the next four years.

Two of Biden’s key debt-relief initiatives are tied up in court: his SAVE income-driven repayment plan, intended to make student-loan payments cheaper for borrowers, and his broader loan forgiveness plan, set to…

Higher employment costs as a result of the budget may push more British businesses into financial difficulty, according to the UK’s largest insolvency practitioner.

Begbies Traynor said increased employment costs, as well as higher interest rates, would extend a period of “elevated insolvency levels”, in a statement to the stock market on Monday.

The Labour government last month raised taxes on business steeply to cover the cost of increased spending on the NHS, schools and the armed forces in its first budget for 14 years.

Rachel Reeves’s decision to raise employers’ national insurance contributions provoked a chorus of protests from businesses. Unlike corporation tax, a rise in national insurance contributions affects every…

Media release

1 December 2024

Business failures continue to propel personal insolvency chain reaction

‘Trumponomics’ could trigger further bankruptcies, says insolvency solutions firm

Business-related personal insolvencies are on the rise, the latest quarterly figures from AFSA show. And geopolitical uncertainty – particularly ‘Trumponomics’ – could trigger greater numbers in 2025, warns insolvency and business turnaround specialist Jirsch Sutherland.

According to the September quarter 2024 New Personal Insolvencies from AFSA, over a quarter (27.9%) were business related, compared to 25.2% for the same period in 2023. “However, the level of personal insolvencies is still well below…

EXCERPT: Edun and Cardoso are championing initiatives to ease debt burdens and foster financial integration across Africa.

The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, and the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Olayemi Cardoso, on Saturday mobilised their counterparts from the African Union (AU) to work towards the establishment of the African Monetary Institute (AMI) as well as the operationalisation of the African Financing Stability Mechanism (AFSM) – two key initiatives they believed have the potential to cure the continent from existing debt and payment system challenges. 

The proposed AFSM framework seeks to provide debt refinancing loans at…

Notably, he spent a decade as a partner at HWL Ebsworth, where he founded and led the Restructuring and Insolvency practice in Perth. He also has experience as a lawyer at Minter Ellison.

“Ashurst’s reputation as a leading global firm with a strong record in the restructuring and insolvency space in Australia and the Asia Pacific region will support me to provide a broad range of solutions to clients. I am eager to work with the talented team at Ashurst and contribute to the firm’s continued success,” Johnson said.

Scott brings a wealth of experience in disputes and investigations, regulatory enforcement, and white-collar crime. She focuses on corporate, regulatory, workplace, and safety investigations, with a…

The bench found that as far as the ‘going concern’ sale in liquidation is concerned, there is a clear difference that only assets are transferred and the liabilities of the Corporate Debtor have to be settled in accordance with Section 53 of the Code