Stay informed with the latest in insolvency news and industry updates. We can keep you up to date with insolvency and finance information from around the world.
Banks and other lenders are being urged to do more to help consumers in a debt trap thanks to mounting credit card bills.
The financial watchdog ASIC says it expects card providers to identify people in difficulty after finding 18.5 per cent of cardholders were behind in repayments, could make only the minimum repayments or had persistent debt.
It’s also proposing new rules to make card providers assess whether a consumer can repay the credit card limit within three years before giving them a card.
ASIC’s Credit Card Lending in Australia report found credit card holders owed $45 billion as at June 2017 and were charged $1.5 billion in fees.
People with multiple credit cards were the most likely people to have problems.
Fewer companies wound up operations in Cayman last year as opposed to 2016.
These are the findings of the Offshore Corporate Insolvency Restructuring Annual Review 2017 compiled by Applebys.
For 2017 40 companies filed insolvency petitions in the Caymans jurisdiction, as opposed to 70 in 2016.
Dispute resolution partner at the firm, Tony Heaver-Wren, says decreases or increases in insolvency petition filings are more likely to affect insolvency and restructure professionals and not the wider economy.
This is because the firms winding up are international and are not Caymanian.
Very few of the petition filings have been for local enterprises. Instead, they are enterprises based around the world that are structu…
Subcontractors WAs Louise Stewart has revealed she plans to step down from her role as chairwoman of the advocacy group to pursue a tech-based solution to the non-payment of subcontractors.
Ms Stewart, who developed a healthcare technology platform that she has since sold, became a campaigner for the WA industry when she started helping her husband, a subcontractor, with his business and realised the extent of non-payment.
The Building Commission estimated non-payment in WAs construction industry was as much as $650 million in 2016-17.
Ms Stewart said that prompted her to start working on a technological platform to change and secure the way payments were made within the industry.
After she started work on her payment solution, ProjectPAY, s…
Fewer companies wound up operations in Cayman last year as opposed to 2016.
These are the findings of the Offshore Corporate Insolvency Restructuring Annual Review 2017 compiled by Applebys.
For 2017 40 companies filed insolvency petitions in the Caymans jurisdiction, as opposed to 70 in 2016.
Dispute resolution partner at the firm, Tony Heaver-Wren, says decreases or increases in insolvency petition filings are more likely to affect insolvency and restructure professionals and not the wider economy.
This is because the firms winding up are international and are not Caymanian.
Very few of the petition filings have been for local enterprises. Instead, they are enterprises based around the world that are structu…
Banks and other lenders are being urged to do more to help consumers in a debt trap thanks to mounting credit card bills.
The financial watchdog ASIC says it expects card providers to identify people in difficulty after finding 18.5 per cent of cardholders were behind in repayments, could make only the minimum repayments or had persistent debt.
It’s also proposing new rules to make card providers assess whether a consumer can repay the credit card limit within three years before giving them a card.
ASIC’s Credit Card Lending in Australia report, released on Wednesday, found credit card holders owed $45 billion as at June 2017 and were charged $1.5 billion in fees.
People with multiple credit cards were the most likely people to have proble…
The BEE partners in a subsidiary of Tubular Technical Construction (TTC) applied for provisional liquidation of the company after it failed to honour an agreement to pay R24 million in outstanding dividends. TTC had paid R11 million out of an agreed R35 million, but had fallen into arrears to the tune of R8.45 million, according to papers filed in the Pretoria High Court.
This adds to the Tubular group of companies lengthening list of worries. As Moneyweb previously reported, Tubular and associated companies are accused of paying bribes of R60 million into the bank account of Hlakudi Translations and Interpretation CC, owned by France Hlakudi, Eskoms senior contracts manager of both the Kusile and Medupi power stations. He resigned sh…
Almost one in six people struggle with credit card debt, and balance transfers don’t always help cut the amount of interest consumers pay, the financial regulator says.
A review carried out by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to be released on Wednesday shows 18.5 per cent of consumers are struggling with credit card debt.
“Our findings confirm the risk that credit cards can cause financial difficulty for many Australian consumers,” ASIC deputy chair Peter Kell said.
Consumers also aren’t advised to carrying balances on cards with lower interest rates rather than those with high rates. ASIC estimates these consumers could have saved about $621 million in interest in the past financial year if they had carried a balan…
In France the workforce is highly unionised and labour laws so robust that it is incredibly hard to dismiss an employee.
OPINION: The former chief executive of France Telecom, as well as six other executives, will stand trial for the suicides of about 60 workers.
In 2006, France Telecom announced plans to restructure the business in an effort to modernise. Over three years, 22,000 workers would be made redundant and another 14,000 would be moved and retrained.
At the same time 6000 younger, more tech-savvy recruits would be hired. The chief executive reportedly said “I…
On 20 March 2018, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published a consultation document on insolvency and corporate governance, which sought views on proposals to improve the governance of companies when they are in or approaching insolvency.
The consultation document went on to explain that the intention is to reduce the risk of major company failures occurring through shortcomings of governance or stewardship, and to strengthen the responsibilities of directors of firms when they are in or approaching insolvency.
The consultation, which closed on 11 June, focussed on four principle areas:
* Sales of businesses in distress, where it was proposed that, in order to deter directors of a parent company from…
One in five credit card holders are struggling to make repayments, while honeymoon rates to lure customers to new cards can create a “debt trap”, the corporate regulator has warned in a broadside that calls on banks to take steps to ensure customers aren’t lumbered with prolonged, high-interest credit card debt.
After the banking royal commission lashed credit card lending at the big banks, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission said in a scathing report on the $45 billion credit card industry that “responsible lending assessments for credit cards can be improved” and many customers have cards that don’t suit their behaviours.
“We are concerned about the amount of problematic debt we found,” ASIC said i…
A former waste company operator has been told by the President of the High Court he was “not out of the woods” yet over an application to jail him for contempt of court.
Mr Justice Peter Kelly told Jim Ferry’s lawyer he seemed to have taken a more realistic approach to proceedings against him for illegal dumping, but it needed to continue.
Last month, Mr Justice Max Barrett gave Mr Ferry, who operated Ferry’s Refuse Collection and Ferry’s Refuse Recyling in Donegal, two weeks to come up with detailed information about what happened to money he made from his illegal dumping activites.
The return date for the case was today but Mr Justice Kelly said he had taken the matter after Mr Justice Barrett had fallen ill and re…
Etihad Airways expects to cut staff under a restructuring plan announced on Tuesday that will see group CEO Tony Douglas take over direct responsibility of the airline business.
State-owned Etihad has been overhauling its business since 2016, when it plunged into a loss following a slowdown in airline passenger growth and failed investments in foreign airlines such as Air Berlin and Alitalia.
