Chinatown restaurants located in liquidation

Three more Chinese restaurant shave gone into liquidation in Sydney after flatlining sales as a result of coronavirus outbreak has forced other iconic venus to close their doors.

Old Town Hong Kong’s two eateries, one on Dixon Street in the heart of Chinatown and the other on Barangaroo’s swanky Mercantile Walk, were both put into liquidation on Friday, along with another business owned by the same directors, Super Dish Chinese Restaurant in the largely Asian southwestern Sydney suburb of Cabramatta.

The Hong Kong-born owners have not stated grounds for the closure.

Timothy Cook from Balance Insolvency has been appointed liquidator of both Old Town Pty Ltd and SuperDish Pty Ltd “as the business struggles to pay its debts as so when they fall due”, documents filed with the organization regulator state.

Mr Cook has been contacted for comment on if the directors attribute the failure of the firms to coronavirus fears, which some Chinatown traders have blamed for income falls of 50 per cent or more.

It comes after the Parramatta Phoenix, part of the high-profile family-owned Phoenix Restaurant Group, was put into voluntary administration on Tuesday. Simultaneously, Parramatta Phoenix Pty Ltd director Calvin Chen’s other business, Darlinghurst Asian Fusion restaurant Mister Dee’s Kitchen, was located into liquidation.

“The director has indicated in initial discussions that one of the factors in the fall in turnover of the restaurants is a a reaction to the coronavirus,” Christopher Darin, partner at insolvency firm Worrells, said in a statement to news.com.au yesterday.

Insolvency firm Jirsch Sutherland says it really is receiving up to dozen calls a day to a dedicated coronavirus hotline for damaged businesses, but expects that number to rapidly rise as many reach the finish of their cash reserves over another few weeks.

Jirsch Sutherland partner Andrew Spring said yesterday that while tourism, travel, retail, hospitality and IT were the most directly afflicted - the tourism sector alone faces vast amounts of dollars in losses due to travel restrictions - the impacts were “significant” and often unexpected.

“There’s a major crayfish and lobster industry up in WA which has basically been mothballed,” he said. “And anecdotally a number of the shipping lines are hurting off the back of an inability to land goods, particularly in China.”

Former Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove, who now heads BizRebuild, a group started by the Business Council of Australia to assist businesses in bushfire-affected areas, today indicated support could possibly be extended to those affected by coronavirus.

“What we’re doing this is a race against time and despair,” he told 2GB.

“So there’s been a sense that obviously some businesses secure and leave. And our job is to prevent that, whatever the reason why, because we’re discussing a number of communities which have taken a real belt over the back of the top from natural disaster. And if viruses and so on imply that tourism is even less likely to occur, then we’re really racing the problem as distinct from the vector of damage.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has hinted a stimulus package is in the works.

“It'll be a targeted plan. It'll be a measured plan. It'll be a scalable plan. It'll be targeted on the true diagnosis of the financial issue we want to confront here,” he told reporters today.

Today, the Reserve Bank slashed the money rate by 25 basis points to a fresh record low of 0.5 % in a bid to head off the damage. “It really is prematurily . to tell how persistent the consequences of the coronavirus will be and at what point the global economy will return to an improving path,” RBA governor Philip Lowe said.