Finance & insurance
HIH, Storm Financial, Opes Prime and the money that vanished.
- ArticleABC Learning: how Eddy Groves built and broke the world's largest listed childcare company
Eddy Groves turned a single Brisbane childcare centre into a listed empire spanning three continents. When the debt came due in 2008, 100,000 children faced losing their places overnight.
- ArticleAdelaide 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.
- ArticleAllco Finance Group: the leasing empire that GFC finished off
Allco Finance Group collapsed in 2008 with debts in the billions. The related-party questions that followed were almost as complex as the structure itself.
- ArticleBabcock & Brown: the gearing machine that couldn't survive the GFC
Babcock & Brown was Australia's second-largest investment bank at its peak. Then the debt that built the empire became the thing that destroyed it.
- ArticleBell 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.
- ArticleHIH Insurance: how Australia's largest corporate failure happened
The 2001 collapse of HIH Insurance wiped out $5.3 billion and left thousands without cover. The Royal Commission's findings on governance failure remain a warning that hasn't fully been heeded.
- ArticleMFS/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.
- ArticleOne.Tel: how Australia's fourth-largest telco burned through a billion dollars
Backed by Packer and Murdoch interests, One.Tel collapsed in May 2001 with debts that ultimately ran to over a billion dollars. This is the story of how it happened.
- ArticleOpes Prime: how a stock-lending firm turned retail investors into unsecured creditors overnight
In March 2008, Opes Prime collapsed owing nearly $1 billion. The retail investors who thought they owned shares discovered they had signed them away. This is how it happened.
- ArticlePyramid 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.
- ArticleSlater & 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.
- ArticleSons 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.
- ArticleStorm 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.
- ArticleTimbercorp and Great Southern: how the tax-driven agribusiness dream ended in ruin
Two ASX-listed giants sold Australians on tax-effective tree plantations and olive groves. When they collapsed in 2009, thousands of investors were left holding loans they could never repay.