Finance & insurance
HIH, Storm Financial, Opes Prime and the money that vanished.
- ArticleABC Learning collapse: how Eddy Groves built and broke it
The ABC Learning collapse left 100,000 children facing lost places. How Eddy Groves built a listed childcare empire on debt and how it fell apart.
- ArticleAdelaide Steamship: John Spalvins' house of mirrors
Adelaide Steamship (Adsteam) built a cross-shareholding empire under John Spalvins, then the early-1990s recession exposed the gearing underneath it.
- ArticleAllco Finance Group: the leasing empire 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 litigation: Australia's longest corporate fight
The Bell Group litigation began with Alan Bond's 1991 collapse and ran for decades, pitting liquidators against banks across courts and parliaments.
- ArticleHIH collapse: how Australia's largest failure happened
The HIH collapse wiped out billions in 2001. See what the Royal Commission found on governance, the FAI deal and the policyholders left without cover.
- 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 collapse: how a telco burned through a billion
The One.Tel collapse in May 2001 left debts that ran past a billion dollars. Here is how Packer and Murdoch money, weak oversight and rapid spending met.
- 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 it
The Quindell deal turned Slater & Gordon from a pioneering listed law firm into a case study in acquisition-led corporate collapse. Here is how it unfolded.
- ArticleSons of Gwalia collapse and the shareholder rights ruling
The Sons of Gwalia collapse over gold hedging losses led to a High Court ruling letting misled shareholders rank as creditors until Parliament stepped in.
- 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: the agribusiness MIS collapse
Timbercorp and Great Southern sold tax-driven plantations and olive groves, then collapsed in 2009, leaving about 65,000 investors with loans.