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There have been some high-profile corporate failures over the past year, and the evidence suggests that the bloodbath isn’t over. We take a look at 25 more prominent cases to draw salient lessons for every business. It’s getting ugly out there. Credit agency Dun & Bradstreet believes one in nine compa...
It's tough to get money at the moment. The venture capital funds have shut up shop, the sharemarket is shying away from IPOs, the banks have backed away and the angel investors have had their wings clipped.  
The threat of recession hangs heavy over the business landscape, but not every company is bracing for bad news. In a sector-by-sector breakdown, SmartCompany reveals the industries of likely refuge in the maelstrom ahead. By Patrick Stafford and James Thomson
The only certainty is uncertainty: chances are the Australian economy is headed for another topsy-turvy year. But for the nation's small- and medium-sized enterprises, there are good sectors to operate in, and not so good. We've taken the pulse of 15 key industries. Here's SmartCompany's guide to 2012, ...
Ian Murray, executive director of the Australian Institute of Export, says there is no way to sugar coat it - this is not an easy time to be an exporter. The dollar is high, many of our biggest trading partners are shaky and expansion is the last thing on the minds of many entrepreneurs. But smart exporters have not given up and they are being rew...
The Costa Group, Australia's number one fruit and vegetable grower and marketer with links to the Geelong Football Club, has sold a 50% stake in the business to US private equity Paine & Partners, as the ambitious company looks to double in size. The family-owned business traces back to 1888, when Italian immigrant Francesco Costa established the first Costa fruit shop in Geelong. Its produce is now sold in Woolworths and Coles supermarkets, and its annual revenue for this ...
After an extraordinarily difficult 2008-09, Australia's small and medium businesses are gearing up for another very tough 12 months this financial year. While economists are expecting a slow recovery to start in the last few months of 2009, the depth of the global recession and a predicted rise in unemployment is likely to take it...
Today's announcement that the Government will spend $43 billion to build a national fibre-to-the-home broadband network has shocked and thrilled the business community.
 Australia's agribusiness sector has been dealt another blow with managed investment scheme promoter Rewards Group and its subsidiary Rewards Projects placed in administration, putting $250 million of investor funds in doubt. The Perth-based company, which manages 12,000 hectares of forestry and fruit plantations around Australia, including teak, mango and strawberry plantations, has been fighting to raise working capital to keep the company trading. However, Rewards Group b...
Patchy. That was the word that defined the Australian economy in 2010, and could well be the best description again in 2011. While most economists are predicting Australia's economy will grow at a rate of about 3.75% in 2011 – that's just above the longer-term trend – much of this growth will be driven by the sec...
The boys from the bush are back. This year's Rich 200 highlights the resurgence of the agribusiness sector. JAMES THOMSON reveals why investors and entrepreneurs are re-examining rural industries.By James Thomson
It's been another big week in the remaking of the Packer empire. James Packer's decision to sell his stake in Challenger Financial Services for just under $400 million takes the tally of his asset sales over the last 12 months to almost $1 billion. In the last four months, his wealth has increased by about $700 million. But while Packer'...
The Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union plans to pursue the owner of an engineering firm which collapsed owing $6.5 million in entitlements to 80 workers. Metaltec Precision International was placed in administration in mid-August. The company was owned by Gillon Group, a Melbourne-based company with interests in property (its website claims to have $1 billion worth of projects under development) construction and engineering, agribusiness, manufacturing, tourism, retail, logis...
It's the $64 million question - when will the economic downturn finally end, and when will the Australian economy start to recover? In order to try and answer this puzzle, SmartCompany asked 12 entrepreneurs for their judgements - and opinions varied wildly. Retail king Gerry Harvey said just one week ago that he thinks the world is on the brink of the biggest boom it's ever seen. "It's ...
Of all the green shoot of economic recovery we need to watch, one of the best measures to monitor is the behaviour of the super rich. The innate sense of timing that so many wealthy entrepreneurs possess means they are a great bellwether - when they start buying, it's usually a good indication that we are close to the bottom of the market. In recent months, the rich ...
The Airport Economist hit the streets of Ho Chi Minh City recently and tried the Saigon taxi driver test. You can mention a plethora of international household names and have to really work through them in broken Vietnamese and broken English to get where you want to go on Saigon's busy streets. But there's one name every taxi drivers knows in Saigon: "Arrr, MITT", that is R.M.I.T. - The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University - which is making quite a splash since setting up in So...
Despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan talking up the prospect of a horror budget, there were actually a wide variety of spending measures across the economy.   Here is SmartCompany's sector-by-sector guide to the major budget initiatives.
They're talking about the great Australian food sector squeeze from Brunswick to the bush. Following a string of food company collapses around the nation, the market power of supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths will go under the microscope today as part of the Senate's inquiry into the perilous state of Australia's food ...
Bearish views on the Australian dollar have been welcomed by exporters, who believe a fall of up to 30 cents is needed to soothe weakened exporters. Describing the Australian dollar as "strongly overvalued", banking giant HSBC expects it will dip below parity with the US dollar in the first quarter of 2012, and trade at about 95 US cents over the next two years. The forecast is based on Australia's vulnerability to global troubles, the prospect of further interest rate cuts ...
Finding the common characteristics of wealthy entrepreneurs is never easy – the rich come from many different backgrounds and there are so many different ways to make money. A few common traits stand out, such as passion, determination, a capacity for hard work and a willingness to take risks. But one of the m...
Economists fear the Queensland flood crisis could cut Australia's GDP by as much as 0.3% of a percentage point across 2011 as the heavily populated cities of Ipswich and Brisbane become the latest flood flashpoints. Late last week, when it seemed that the worst of the flood crisis was over, economists including CommSec's Craig James said the likely impact on economic growth was minimal. But with flooding intensifying in South East Queensland, the economic impact and the numbe...
South Australian transport company Fletchers' Freighters has been put up for sale after collapsing into voluntary administration. The business, which was started in 1948, was placed in administration 12 days ago after reportedly battling cashflow issues. The administrators, Rob Kirman and Sam Davies from the Adelaide office of insolvency firm McGrathNicol, have continued to trade the business but are now seeking "urgent expressions of interest" from parties who might buy the comp...
Australia's largest listed managed investment scheme company Great Southern has been placed in voluntary administration with debts of almost $700 million.   Great Southern is essentially an agribusiness company that manages trees, horticultural products and cattle, and then packages them as investment products and sells them to retail investors. The company had raised $1.8 billion over the l...
Want to know how to become a self-made rich list member? Sell your business, start investing and be patient. That's the advice from billionaire US investor Ken Fisher, who penned a piece in
Meet the new breed of fast-growing companies that are nimbly navigating Australia’s patchwork economy. A staggering 42 members of the Smart50 class of 2011 have not appeared on the list before, the biggest turnover in the five-year history of the list. Those companies arrived with a huge bang, with their average growth rate during the past three years an impressive 97%, well above last year’s average growth rat...
There aren't many Australian investors who can move a market like Phil Mathews, the elusive hedge fund manager who owns Mathews Capital Partners. Last week, on September 13, shares in struggling chemicals group Nufarm rose sharply on rumours that Mathews had built a 6% stake in the company. The next day, the Aust...
RM Williams has been sold to a capital equity group backed by fashion giant Louis Vuitton, the iconic Australian manufacturer and retailer confirmed yesterday after weeks of speculation. Owner Ken Cowley confirmed in March he was looking to sell the business and rumours of a Louis Vuitton purchase emerged late last week. A private equity fund sponsore...
The Federal Budget is short on big-ticket spending initiatives, but full of smaller, targeted measures designed to give specific sectors a boost. SmartCompany has ferreted through the Budget papers to find out how the Budget will impact your sector. Advertising and marketing Nothing spe...
There are many lessons from the collapse of Krispy Kreme Australia. Fads never last. American imports don't always find favour in Australia. In retail, getting good locations is everything. But for the wealthy, the big lesson is a bit different – not every little investment works out as planned. From a r...
There are more than 183,809 members of the Iron Man 2 movie's Facebook page. Punters just love that movie and they like chatting about it. On the flipside, the new Australian movie I Love You Too's Facebook site has just 686 members. Ouch. Social networks deliver instant feedback on a product, person or service. "The s...
The Packer family has finally severed its ties with the agribusiness sector, selling its stake in meat processor Teys Brothers for an undisclosed price. James Packer's Consolidated Pastoral Holdings, which has owned 50% of Teys for decades, has sold its interest in the group to the Cargills, the world's largest agricultural company. The price of the deal is thought to be under preliminary estimates of a $500 million acquisition. Cargill and Teys, which is owned by managem...
One of the most powerful figures in the Australian media sector, Harold Mitchell, is going global. Yesterday, London-based media group Aegis announced it would acquire Mitchell's media buying and communications firm Mitchell Communications Group in a $363 million cash-and-shares deal. Harold Mitchell, who owns a 30% stake in Mitchell Communications (his immediate family owns another 10%), will get $120 million worth of shares in Aegis, making him the second largest shareholder in th...
The fragile state of Australia's non-mining economy has been underlined by a spate of small collapses in recent days, with the retail, manufacturing and agribusiness sectors all hit. Upmarket clothing retailer Belinda International, which has eight boutiques across Sydney and Melbourne, was placed in the hands of administrator Adam Farnsworth of Dean-Willcocks Shepard on August 24. According to reports, the business is continuing to trade and no staff have been cut at this point....
End-of-year tax strategies for SME owners are dominated by the imminent halving of the annual caps on
Private equity, famous for snapping up underperforming or under-pressure businesses, turning them around and flogging them off after several years, is still experiencing a major post-GFC hangover. But players say the sector's appetite for acquisitions is returning, and this is good news for quality small and medium enterprise...
Australia's troubled forestry sector has lost another member, with timber group Willmott Forests placed into the hands of receivers with $120 million of debt and a huge question mark over $400 million of investor funds. The listed timber company has been suspended from trading on the Australian Securities Exchange since July and has been locked in a dire battle to secure the on-going support of its banks. Yesterday, key lenders Commonwealth Bank of Australia and St George lost pa...
The Elizabeth, a luxury Sydney apartment project overlooking Sydney's Hyde Park, is up for sale after the former corporate high flyer that bought the tower's $20.1 million penthouse went bankrupt. Rod Price, the former chairman of John Fairfax Holdings and corporate raiding vehicle Brierly Invsetments, filed for bankruptcy late last week with debts of $35 million. He shot to prominence in December last year when it emerged he had agreed to pay $20.1 million for the penthou...
The carnage from the collapse of managed investment scheme company Great Southern will be huge. The company has 12,000 shareholders, plus more than 40,000 investors in its agribusiness investment schemes, which included everything from timber and olives through to almonds and cattle. Somewhere in Perth, Great Southern's founder and major shareholder John Young is also likely to be reeling.
When news that former corporate high-flyer Rodney Price had gone bankrupt broke last week, the same question was asked in offices around Australia: Where did all the money go? In his heyday, Price was one of Australia's most aggressive corporate raiders, teaming up with Sir Ron Brierley to launch a string of takeovers in the 1980s. He was chairman of...
You know times are tough when one of Australia’s richest entrepreneurs puts his corporate jet on the market.   Aviation circles are abuzz with the news that a Global Express jet that was owned by the Packer family’s private company, Consolidated Press, has been put up with sale. The jet, which has been used to ferry the Packer family to and from the US and around Australia, has been listed on aviation website jets.4u. Interested parties are invited to contact th...
Forget Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim Helu. The names Australian wealth watchers need to know are Robin Li, Mukesh Ambani and Wee Cho Yaw. As a new report from financial services firms Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management confirmed this week, the epicentre of global wealth has officially shifted from the West to the Eas...
The mining, agribusiness, insurance and consumer staples sectors have started counting the costs of the Queensland flood disaster, with the Queensland Premier Anna Bligh estimating the final toll could be as high as $5 billion. This morning beverages giant Coca-Cola Amatil became the latest big-name company to warn that its earnings had been affected by the floods. CCA cited "the impact of the colder and wetter weather across the Eastern seaboard, in particular the flooding in Queensla...
Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan might have promised a tough budget, but he still managed to find small amounts of cash for almost every sector of the economy, including a number of important initiatives for small business. With this in mind, let's take a sector-by-secto...
Who invented free trade? Was it the British Economist David Ricardo (whose masterful explanation of the principles of comparative advantage has become a text book favourite for economic students ever since)?   Well, Ricardo may have advocated free trade in theory but its origins in practice come from a more unlikely historical source. On a recent trip to Mongolia, the airport economist learnt that it was in fact the famous Mongolian war load Chinggis Khaan, who can in some...
Seoul has played an important role in Australia's economic and diplomatic history. In fact it was in Seoul 20 years ago, in 1989, that the then Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke launched the APEC concept following key spadework by Australia and the Republic of Korea to build the foundations of an Asia Pacific community. Hawke launched the APEC concept in a speech in Seoul in the January 1989 and the first ever APEC meeting was held in Canberra in November of that year. When...
Free trade agreements can do wonders for opening up a market to Australians, and the latest FTA with Chile is a stand-out example. TIM HARCOURT Australia signed a free trade agreement (FTA) with Chile this week – the first FTA under the new Rudd Labor Government. Trade Minister Simon Crean has described the historic agreement as: “A high-quality agreement that covers goods, services and investment. The commitments go beyond what each country has committed at the WTO.”...
Great Southern's banking syndicate has rejected any hopes of restructuring the agribusiness investment scheme company by calling in receivers to take over the business.   According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, the company's lead bankers - ANZ Banking Group, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, BankWest and Japanese bank Mizuho - refused a request for $35 million that would allowed th...
The Australian dollar has continued its rally today, hitting a 10-month high of US85c, but exporters warn their industry will be under pressure if the dollar continues to rise in value. Ian Murray, executive director of the Australian Institute of Export, says exporters have enjoyed a solid few months of good activity but the recent rise in the Australian dollar is presenting the industry with significant challenges. "It hurts. In the last five or 10 days, this has been a ...
Exporters warn the strong Australian dollar is now beginning to have a real impact on business, with surfwear retailer Billabong announcing a 4.5% drop in profit and Bendigo engineering group Thales Australia cutting 100 jobs due to the high Australian dollar. Ian Murray, executive director of the Australian Institute of Export, says the high value of the currency is putting so much pressure on exporters that many are considering leaving the business altogether. “Absolutel...