The hearing into the adequacy of the disclosures contained in KordaMentha’s much-maligned report to the creditors of TEN Network Holdings (TNH) was always going to be run with extreme diligence by Supreme Court Justice Ashley Black. This is not only because SiN suspects that Justice Black conducts every hearing with extreme diligence but because TNH creditors are scheduled to vote on a momentous resolution to…
While everyone SiN has spoken to about the formation of Assured Legal Solutions assures us that the merger of Henry Davis York and Norton Rose Fullbright has nothing to do with their decision to strike out on their own, SiN is reluctant to attribute Assured’s conception to coincidence, it being the most unreliable of fathers. That said, Assured is open for business on its own…
Mark Korda is probably less than delighted that the recent triumph his co-owned firm engineered via the sale of Arrium has been largely neutered, obscured and in terms of publicity trounced by the TEN Network Holdings (TEN) imbroglio but it didn’t show yesterday, even when the prickly and provocative John Atanaskovic made a seemingly amicable overture. Of course in a room packed with lawyers and journalists, it pays to keep fists…
First it was the DIRRI. Then the supplementary DIRRI. And now it’s the report to creditors. When it comes to TEN Network Holdings, voluntary administrators KordaMentha can scarcely issue a document that isn’t analysed by TEN’s unsuccessful bidders in the hope that some perceived misstep, omission or flaw will deliver the opportunity they need to reverse the consequences of their own miscalculation. This week we’ve seen…
Perhaps we can take comfort when the views of the insolvency regulators are diametrically opposed to the views of experts in the industry and academe? After all, isn’t ensuring nobody is happy the secret to successful government? Such were the thoughts that occurred as SiN read the social media commentary issuing forth after September 1, the day the second and final tranche of the Insolvency…
The barrister defending controversial ex-liquidator Andrew Wily against ASIC’s call for a judicial inquiry didn’t hold back yesterday. “There’s an element of spite about this,” barrister Ian Jackman SC told presiding Judge Paul Brereton as he sought to undermine ASIC’s case. “They want public censure,” he said. Jackman’s allegation of a spite motivation was part of a bid to demonstrate why the regulator’s application for a…
Well litigation funder Doug Hayter has extracted himself from the debacle that is Young V Thomson (formerly trustee of the property of Young) [2017] FCAFC 140 but the same cannot quite be said for Veritas Advisory’s Louise Thomson, who will be forced to scrape together as much as a quarter of a million dollars from her own resources following last week’s judgment of the Federal Court…
A critical element of the Network TEN – CBS transaction being engineered by voluntary administrators (VAs) KordaMentha looks set to be challenged, a court heard this week. On Thursday, barrister Ian Jackman told Justice Brigitte Markovic that “other parties are likely to appear and may well oppose” the application by the VAs to transfer shares controlled by TEN’s three billionaire shareholders to the American entertainment behemoth. Might two of the three – Lachlan Murdoch and…
When the planets align, the wind blows fair and the detail is both accurate and abundant, the dispensers of justice are happy to approve liquidator remuneration claims on the basis of hourly rates without recourse to the inherently fee-reductive principles of proportionality. In the latest instalment in the growing genre of judgments spawned by Sakr Nominees Pty Limited [2017] NSWSC 668 Ferrier Hodgson partner George Georges has…