Liquidators called in to wind up CBD international school

HUNDREDS of students who signed up for courses at a Brisbane CBD business returned from vacation to find it closed. Now liquidators have the job on recovering what they can.

SCHOOL’S OUT

LIQUIDATORS have been appointed to an international school in Brisbane’s CBD that has closed it doors leaving more than a hundred mostly overseas students in the lurch.

Wollongong-based liquidator Danny Vrkic, of DV Recovery Management, was appointed last week to the Australian Business School by the Queensland Supreme Court after creditors applied to wind the company up.

Vrkic told your diarist that the school records had now been seized by the Australian Skills Quality Authority. “We were a bit blind sided by this one,” Vrkic said. “The students came back from break back in June and the doors were locked up.”

He said the claims against the school could be substantial, given it had more than 100 students many of whom had paid their fees up front.

Australian Business School operated out of this building in Queen St

The collapse follows several years of uncertainty at the school, which had students studying business, management, English, aged care, IT and digital media. Back in 2015, the Australian Skills Quality Authority raised several red flags about the school, finding “significant noncompliance” in four areas of its training regime.

The sole director of the school is 77-year-old Dutch-born Nicolaas Bagijn, who is now reportedly back in the Netherlands. Bagijn was not contactable yesterday.

“We checked out the director and he has no assets in Australia and is now believed to no longer be in the country,” Vrkic said. He said employees have lodged claims against the school with the Fair Work Commission.

A spokesperson for the Australian Skills Quality Authority told City Beat that 114 students had been affected by the closure of the school, whose registration had been cancelled due to its failure to comply with regulatory reporting requirements.

ASQA says students are being assisted to arrange transfers to other suitable providers or, if this could not be achieved, provide them with a refund of unused tuition fees. Some students have left complaints on the school’s Facebook page, with one saying she finished her course in April but has yet to receive her certificate. “Now, months later and repeated efforts to contact them, I find out they are, in fact, closed and are not issuing certificates. I am out thousands of dollars and have nothing to show for it,” she said.

CONCRETE PLANS

YOU would think Toowoomba-based concrete business Wagners would be in clover with big ticket projects such as Queen’s Wharf and Cross River Rail ramping up. But the company, founded by John Wagner (illustrated) and his brother Dennis, has not had a good year. Wagners, which has seen its shares slump more than half since October to $180, announced in August that annual profit slumped 49 per cent due to a sluggish construction market and the effect of an ongoing price dispute with its biggest cement customer Boral.

Wagners Holding director John Wagner.

On Tuesday, Wagners announced a $40 million capital raising to repay debt and strengthen its balance sheet. It warned that revenue had been impacted by the delayed timing of major infrastructure projects but was confident of securing several contracts next year.

Under the capital raising, 25.8 million new Wagner shares will be offered as $1.55 each. Wagners also is accelerating the expansion of its composite fibre technologies business in the US, with a new factory located in either Texas or Wyoming due to open soon.

Meanwhile, its ongoing dispute with Boral is set down for a trial in the Supreme Court at the end of November.

POSH NOSH

IT’S going to come down to the wire, but the man behind Howard Smith Wharves’ newest restaurant has promised it will open this Friday. Stanley is the first of two restaurants slated to open within the riverfront precinct over the next month.

Howard Smith Wharves chief executive Luke Fraser has promised the hotly anticipated Cantonese-Chinese fusion restaurant would be open on time, despite changes being made.

“They’re rushing,” Fraser says. “They’ll go down to the wire, but they’re determined to be opened on the 1st (November)”

Stanley’s head chef is Louis Tikaram, from the Northern NSW town of Mullumbimby, who made it big in the LA culinary scene.

Chef Louis Tikaram at Stanley. Pic Mark Cranitch.