Madison Marriage and Barney Thompson
PwC’s role in the liquidation process of the collapsed contractor Carillion has come under scrutiny after it emerged that the auditor already has two separate, and apparently conflicting roles, including one advising the defunct company’s pension trustees.
Six PwC executives were appointed by the High Court on Monday as “special managers” in the liquidation process to help wind down Carillion, which became insolvent after building up £1.3 billion ($2.25 billion) in debts and a £587m pension deficit.
Deloitte and KPMG, rival ‘big four’ firms, had been ruled out of the liquidation role because they were already Carillion’s internal and external auditors…
Read the full article at: http://www.afr.com/news/world/pwcs-multiple-roles-with-carillion-come-under-scrutiny-20180116-h0jgtd
Bill Gates charitable foundation has agreed to pay Nigerias debt to Japan so the African nation can become polio-free.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced it will shoulder the $76m debt for Africas largest economy, which is recovering from its first recession in 20 years.
Nigeria originally took the loan in 2014 and payments are set to start this year and will be repaid over a 20-year period.
The loan was part of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) provided by the Japanese government in 2014 for increased polio eradication efforts.
According to Quartz Africa, the Gates Foundation agreed to pay the loan on Nigerias behalf after the country achiev[ed] more than 80% vaccination coverage in at lea…
Read the full article at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/bill-gates-nigeria-debt-pay-polio-eradication-foundation-money-pledge-a8163056.html
GAMBLERS are feeding millions of dollars into Central Queensland’s pokie machines every month, new research has revealed.
According to Queensland Government Gamlbing and Liquor statistics, last month alone more than $9.19 million was put through the CQ region’s 2541 machines, with Rockhampton punters throwing in $4.1m of that price.
Rockhampton currently has 1029 electronic gaming machines approved at 32 operational sites around the city.
Although most hotels or clubs in Rocky have less than 50 machines to play, four premises had hundreds.
A woman tries her luck on a pokie machine. DAN PELED
Rockhampton Leagues Club and Frenchville Sports Club topped the list with 150 machines each, closely followed by Yaralla Sports Club which has 1…
Read the full article at: https://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/news/revealed-shocking-amount-cqs-gamblers-feed-pokies-/3312311/
The Publican Group business was quietly placed into voluntary administration at the end of last year, after selling off all of its assets to Australian Venue Co.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission published that Richard Albarran, Cameron Shaw and Carl Huxtable of Chadwick Hall were appointed as administrators of the Publican Group in mid-December.
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The first meeting for creditors of the company was held in Perth on 28 December, just a few days after the Chris…
Read the full article at: https://www.theshout.com.au/australian-hotelier/publican-group-placed-voluntary-administration/
TUC boss calls on government to establish group to share knowledge on collapsed firm
Unions are worried about the impact of the firms collapse on sub-contractors and Carillion staff.
Photograph: Darren Staples/Reuters
Trade unions have demanded that a taskforce be set up to help deal with the fallout from the Carillion collapse and accused ministers of failing to adequately prepare for the demise of the outsourcing firm.
Frances OGrady, the TUC general secretary, told the business secretary, Greg Clark, on Tuesday night he needed to set up a body including representatives from unions and companies in Carillions supply chain in the next few days, to ensure knowledge was shared to establish…
Read the full article at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/16/carillion-unions-demand-taskforce-to-prioritise-at-risk-firms
Those payments as well as several others stretching back to 2005 were met with consternation by industry observers at the time
Sears Canada gave up the ghost this year after more than a decade of pundits calling for its demise.
TORONTO Sears Canadas bankruptcy monitor is investigating more than a half billion dollars of controversial dividend payments that the retailer made to its shareholders years before the defunct department store chain was declared insolvent last year.
In a court filing this week, court-appointed bankruptcy monitor FTI Consulting said it had identified potential transactions of interest in the ongoing court proceedings, inc…
Read the full article at: http://calgaryherald.com/news/retail-marketing/sears-canada-bankruptcy-monitor-to-examine-contentious-shareholder-payments-of-more-than-600m/wcm/caf22775-35e6-4e0c-b0a1-ebf334b1f4ad
To further ease the insolvency and bankruptcy process and streamline the acquisition of stressed assets, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley may do away with no-objection certificates required for asset transfers.
This comes under Section 281 of the Income-Tax Act, and it will be waived for transactions between companies under insolvency and those buying their assets.
Besides, the finance ministers speech is also likely to dwell o…
Read the full article at: http://www.business-standard.com/budget/article/budget-2018-may-waive-noc-to-streamline-transfer-of-stressed-assets-118011700080_1.html
Ukraine’s central bank says an investigation into the country’s largest lender, PrivatBank, shows that it had been “subjected to a large-scale and coordinated fraud” over at least a decade.
The fraud resulted in the bank, which was taken into state control in 2016, suffering a loss of at least $5.5 billion, the central bank said in a statement on January 16.
One of the bank’s former main shareholders, Ihor Kolomoyskiy, dismissed the results of the probe as “nonsense.”
The central bank commissioned the independent audit conducted by the global investigation firm Kroll and other international companies.
Central bank deputy governor Kateryna Rozhkova said that the findings have been passed to the Prosecutor-General’s Office fo…
Read the full article at: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukriane-privatebank-large-scale-fraud-kolomoyskiy/28979045.html
Maria* is 68-years-old. She has been living alone for many years following a divorce. Maria is unable to work due to chronic medical conditions, however, she is still paying off a home loan and is saddled with two credit card debts which her aged disability pension doesnt come close enough to helping with.
Finances regularly top our list of worries according to the annual Stress and wellbeing report by the Australian Psychological Society. With the report indicating that Financial issues are rated as the top cause of stress over the five years, while also of concern is the increase in the number of people turning to gambling to manage stress.
According to The Economist, Australians lose more money gambling per person than any ot…
Read the full article at: https://catholicoutlook.org/maria-beat-addiction/
Private debt is recognised as an institutional asset class and as an alternative source of risk-adjusted returns for institutional investors globally. While some investors have specific, fixed allocations to private debt, others allocate from fixed income or private equity.
In Africa, there has been a convergence of some parts of the direct lending, opportunistic credit, equity and real estate markets. This is the result of factors such as structural and economic reform and poor access for many companies to well-developed capital markets.
There are a large number of public and private African companies with strong operations t…
Read the full article at: https://www.ft.com/content/7e049004-fabe-11e7-9b32-d7d59aace167