Falling off the Rich List. This year’s BRW Rich List was calculated in April, shortly before Babcock’s share price collapse — as a result, Babcock CEO Phil Green was happily listed at number 137 with an estimated minimum net worth of $293 million. At the time, Green ferociously defended the Babcock & Brown business model, amusingly telling the magazine that “we want to be in there with a lot of cash when liquidity starts to return – that’s when you make a lot of money.” Sadly, Phil probably won’t be making much money any more. As Alan Kohler noted in Business Spectator, given Babcock’s business consisted of using “readily-available debt to overpay for property and infrastructure and put the assets into funds that have unbreakable 25-year management contracts with B&B that involve very high cash fees based on market capitalisation, and make distributions to investors out of asset revaluation reserves”, we have probably won’t see Green on the Rich List again. — Adam Schwab

Fears of irregular trading in Ten. Market disquiet has emerged about trading in Ten Network shares in the lead-up to the company’s announcement of a shock earnings downgrade last week, amid speculation that regulators are examining the trades. Ten made the unexpected announcement last Friday that its operating profit for the year to August would “be down by approximately 10 per cent” during a third-quarter profit briefing that was made two weeks earlier than originally intended, The Australian reports. But in the three days prior to the unexpected announcement of both the profit downgrade and its third-quarter results, Ten had three of its four busiest trading days for the year, with close to 29 million shares in the stock traded during the period. — Nick Tabakoff, The Australian

NSW the home of bad borrowers. Lenders with customers in arrears on home loans of 90 days or more are overwhelmingly concentrated in New South Wales, a new analysis of the performance of securitised home loan pools by Moody’s Investors Service shows. Arrears of more than 90 days are 0.66 per cent of all loans in New South Wales, but only 0.22 per cent Australia-wide. Eight of the top 10 delinquent localities are in Sydney (and mainly in the south-western suburbs), the central coast and Wollongong. The other two in the top 10 are Queensland’s mining belt, centred on Mount Isa, and in what Moody’s terms “South Australia – south”. Low doc loans are also, unsurprisingly, showing higher levels of arrears than loans subject to more scrutiny by lenders. Moody’s said arrears on low doc loans were 0.84 per cent across all securitised loan pools reviewed by the firm, and compared with arrears of 0.34 per cent of fully verified loans. — The Sheet

Allco looking to offload wind assets. The embattled Allco Finance Group is looking to cut its most pressing debt problems to $675 million by the end of next month after sealing a deal to sell its prized US wind farm assets. Little more than two years after the triumphant launch of its wind-energy business with the unveiling of the huge development project in Tehachapi, California, Allco has reluctantly offloaded its interests to an American energy consortium for $US325 million ($346 million). Tehachapi is one of the world’s largest wind-power generation schemes in the world and is the biggest such project in the US under the control of one operator. … Yesterday’s announcement – which should see Tehachapi change hands in six weeks once regulatory approvals have been gained – will be a welcome move in Allco’s battle to reduce its outstanding loans.It will book post-tax proceeds of $165 million from the sale which, together with its release from other credit-provision obligations of $65 million, will allow the company to reduce its liabilities by $230 million. – Danny John, SMH

Likewise Babcock. Babcock & Brown Wind Partners, the Australian owner of wind energy projects, may get as much as $3 billion as Iberdrola SA and Union Fenosa SA consider buying some of its European assets. First round offers were due on June 16, said three people with knowledge of the plan, declining to be identified as details are private. Madrid-based Union Fenosa is among companies and infrastructure funds which submitted offers, the people said. Babcock & Brown Ltd., Babcock Wind’s parent, rose in Sydney trading on optimism a sale may help satisfy bankers that it can repay A$2.8 billion in debt ($2.6 billion). The company is relying on the sale to restore investors’ confidence after a stock rout cut its market value in half the past week. — Ambereen Choudhury and Nicholas Comfort, Bloomberg