Great Australian Collapses
The spectacular flame-outs — how some of Australia’s biggest companies rose, overreached and fell, and who paid for it.
Australia has produced some of the most dramatic corporate collapses in the developed world — from Ansett and One.Tel to HIH Insurance, ABC Learning and Storm Financial. Each is a story of ambition, blind spots and the moment the music stopped.
These pieces reconstruct what happened from the public record: administrators’ reports, court judgments, Royal Commission findings and the reporting of the day.
Latest in rise & fall
- Virgin Australia's 2020 collapse: how administration saved the airline
Virgin Australia's voluntary administration was Australia's biggest airline failure since Ansett. Here's how Bain Capital ended up owning it.
By Ray Petrakis - Slater & Gordon and the Quindell deal that nearly ended the firm
How Slater & Gordon's 2015 UK acquisition of Quindell's professional services arm turned a listed law firm into a case study in corporate collapse.
By Ray Petrakis - MFS/Octaviar: the Gold Coast collapse that unravelled a $2.5bn empire
How MFS Limited grew into a sprawling Gold Coast financial empire, then collapsed in 2008 into one of Australia's longest-running insolvency sagas.
By Ray Petrakis - Pyramid Building Society: the Geelong collapse a fuel levy had to fix
How a Geelong building society's 1990 collapse left 200,000 depositors exposed, and why Victorian motorists paid it off at the bowser for a decade.
By Ray Petrakis - Adelaide Steamship: how John Spalvins built a $12 billion house of mirrors
Adsteam's cross-shareholding empire made John Spalvins Australia's most admired executive. Then the early-1990s recession found the gearing underneath.
By Ray Petrakis - Centro Properties: the $18bn debt maturity that nearly ended it, and the court case on director duty
Centro Properties survived the GFC only just, undone by short-term debt and a balance-sheet reclassification error that produced one of Australia's landmark director-duty rulings.
By Ray Petrakis - Sons of Gwalia: the hedging collapse that rewrote shareholder rights
Sons of Gwalia's 2004 collapse over gold hedging losses produced a High Court ruling that let aggrieved shareholders queue as creditors, alarming boards for a decade.
By Ray Petrakis - Bell Group: the collapse that spawned the longest litigation in Australian corporate history
Alan Bond's Bell Group fell in 1991. What followed was a banks-versus-liquidators legal war that consumed three decades, two jurisdictions and hundreds of millions in costs.
By Ray Petrakis - Harris Scarfe: the accounting scandal that brought down a 150-year-old retailer
Harris Scarfe traded through two world wars and the Depression before collapsing in 2001. The accounting fraud that accelerated its end took years of litigation to untangle.
By Ray Petrakis - Storm Financial: the advice firm that wiped out a generation of retirees
How a Townsville financial planning firm built a leveraged investment model that worked brilliantly in a bull market — and then destroyed thousands of ordinary Australian lives when the GFC arrived.
By Ray Petrakis - Compass Airlines: the low-cost challenger that crashed twice
In the early 1990s, Compass Airlines twice tried to break the Ansett–Australian Airlines duopoly and twice ended in administration. Here's how it happened.
By Ray Petrakis - Dick Smith Electronics: how a private-equity float became one of retail's most scrutinised collapses
The 2016 receivership of Dick Smith Electronics left creditors short and raised hard questions about inventory accounting and the mechanics of its 2013 float.
By Ray Petrakis