Executive Summary: February 01, 2010
By Scott Rochfort | smh.com.au | 01 February
The final piece of the carcass of the collapsed Octaviar Limited (aka MFS) will be offered to potential buyers today. The liquidator of the financial engineer is expected to put the Sunkids childcare business officially up for sale.
Bentleys Corporate Recovery is expected to open a ''dataroom'' for potential buyers of the business, which operates 20 centres and owns 36 other centres and development sites across Australia.
The Sunkids sale comes two years after the initial implosion of MFS. There have already been more than 200 expressions of interest.
However, the creditors and former shareholders of the fallen MFS and its satellites are probably more focused on the liquidator's public examination of several former high flyers in the company in April.
The former MFS chief executive, Michael King, has been summonsed to a NSW Supreme Court examination where he is expected to provide his first public explanation of the collapse of the company, which has more than $2 billion of liabilities.
Other ex-MFS staff summonsed to appear include another former chief executive, Craig White, and David Anderson, the ex-chief financial officer and a well-paid consultant to MFS's former liquidator, Deloitte.
SHELL FOR SALE
An attempt by a Melbourne Greek business identity to backdoor-list a traffic sign company through the shell of a collapsed West Australian fish farmer has been ditched.
One month after a deadline passed for Con Scrinis, the former joint managing director of the road sign concern Traffic Technologies, to raise the minimum $2 million needed to backdoor-list his newly created Traffic Group, the administrator of Western Kingfish is spruiking the shell of the former fish farmer again.
Creditors approved a ''holding'' deed of company arrangement last week, allowing the administrator Ferrier Hodgson to find a new taker for the shell of the fish farmer that once included Lachlan Murdoch as a key shareholder.
The administrator of Western Kingfish values the shell of the company at $336,217. If all goes well, unsecured creditors could get as much as 22c in the dollar. Shareholders are expected to get nothing.
The company, which was listed for little more than a year, suffered a few problems, such as most of its kingfish dying prematurely.
HOME TORTURES
The language from the mortgage broking industry about the impact of rising interest rates is becoming increasingly melodramatic.
Warning that the recent trio of official rate increases had ''slammed the brakes on borrowing'', the head of Australian Finance Group, Brett McKeon, reckons the rises have already ''had a far more dramatic effect on property buying than anything we saw during the global financial crisis''.
''The drip feed of rate rises is like water torture,'' the former part-owner of the Perth Glory football club said at the weekend.
CBD looks forward to seeing the method of torture to which McKeon makes comparisons when the cash rate heads towards 5 per cent. The rack? Waterboarding? Barry Manilow?
TALK OF MIRACLES
China is not the only communist regime reporting strong economic growth. The Korean Central News Agency in North Korea - though providing no figures - has reported the hermit state has shrugged off problems that have been plaguing the capitalist system.
''As the economic power of the DPRK has grown remarkably stronger, thanks to the high-pitched drive for a great surge, it is now demonstrating its might as a political, ideological and military power and has in place a springboard from which it can proudly leap towards a high eminence of an economic power,'' it reported.
''The Korean people can work world-startling miracles once again, and open the gate to a thriving nation earlier than scheduled, when they tap all the economic and technical potentials and possibilities and make redoubled efforts.''
BARBIE'S HEALTH
Some more encouraging news has emerged out of the US profit reporting season. The toymaker Mattel reported it had managed to brainwash the latest generation of young girls into buying Barbie dolls - partly with the help of Facebook and Twitter.
''The result of all of this cultural conversation, I am proud to say, is that for the first time in years all three brand health indicators are headed in the right direction for Barbie. Our US shipments into retailers are up. Retail takeaway is up. Share is up. That is the trifecta. Barbie is back. In 2010 we expect to build on the momentum we created in 2009,'' said the Mattel chief executive, Robert Eckert, at an analyst briefing.
In spite of the financial meltdown, Barbie sales were 9 per cent higher in the US last year and 14 per cent higher internationally.
First published by Smh.com.au on February 01 2010
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