Hot Topics

2017

FEG fee offensive

Fees, Liquidators, Regulation/Legislation 24 February 2017

Liquidators react to FEG fee offensive

The insolvency grapevine – always well fertilised – is blossoming as the Department of Employment’s FEG Recovery Unit progresses its offensive against liquidators whom it regards as having inappropriately levied general liquidation expenses against circulating asset realisations. ARITA chief John Winter yesterday confirmed that many of the organisation’s members had voiced concerns about the FEG fee offensive and the approach taken by FEG recovery czar and chief…

Bruck litigation commences.

Liquidations, Liquidators, Litigation, Regulation/Legislation 22 February 2017

Bruck Writs served – challenge under Section 596AB

It’s been a while coming but lawyers for the liquidators of Bruck Textile Technologies (BTT) (In Liquidation) have served the company’s two most senior officers and its owner and chairman with a multi-million dollar compensation claim in which they allege the defendants breached their directors duties, engineered uncommercial transactions and contravened the Corporations Act’s section 265D as it applies to capital reductions. BTT’s chairman and owner,…

Penrice Soda liquidators claw back ATO preferences

Fees, Liquidators 22 February 2017

McGrathNicol claws back ATO preferences

It’s no great stretch to imagine that the biggest creditor in the nation might also be the biggest beneficiary of preferences, irrespective of the fact that Australia’s biggest creditor knocks off each day nine minutes earlier than the average clock watcher. What’s that about? Beating the afternoon rush? For insolvency practitioners, tackling the Australian Tax Office (ATO) over preferences can be fraught. Like any other…

Terminator creditor still fighting for surplus

Bankruptcy, Trustees 22 February 2017

Terminator creditor in 25 year pursuit

Bentley’s Kate Barnet might feel like she’s in Terminator III – or should that be four – as relentless creditor Monica Low, also known as Low Mooi Kwee – continues her seemingly endless pursuit of compensation from the estate of former bankrupt, Mathew Keralavakayil Mathai. A resident of Vancouver, Low commenced her quest long ago and far away. It was 1993, in the suitably Bleak House-sounding Chancery…

Phoenix target Armstrong and Shaw wound up

Accountants, Discipline, Liquidators 17 February 2017

Advisory at centre of Phoenix probe wound up

Worrells’ Adelaide partner Nick Cooper has moved to wind up a company targeted by the multi-agency Phoenix Taskforce in a series of raids  last year. On February 8 in the Federal Court of South Australia orders were made appointing Pitcher Partners Andrew Yeo and Gess Rambaldi liquidators of Armstrong and Shaw Pty Ltd, one of a group of companies connected to controversial pre-insolvency advisor Philip…

Bankruptcy trustee preserves his indemnity

Bankruptcy, Fees, Judgment, Trustees 17 February 2017

Yachting bon vivant evades impact of costs

BPS Recovery’s Max Prentice has dodged a major blow in the Federal Court, with a judge yesterday ordering he pay 70 per cent of the costs of a creditor who challenged his handling of a meeting of creditors of former bankrupt and struck off solicitor Robert Coshott but declining to make an order that Prentice be precluded from utilising his right to be indemnified for those costs…

bankrupt uses ad words against trustee

Bankruptcy, Trustees, VA's & DoCA's 15 February 2017

Trustee stalker’s tactics threatened to unseat VAs

Safe workplaces are all they rage are they not? Sterilised of bullies and abusers, staff can be at their productive best and woe betide anyone who doesn’t take the issue seriously. Shame the application of those values is so selective. Where are the vocal anti-bullying advocates when a bankruptcy trustee is subjected to what Rodgers Reidy director David Hambleton has been enduring? If you haven’t…

Queensland Nickel liquidators eying Palmer iron ore windfall.

Judgment, Liquidators, Litigation 15 February 2017

Palmer’s potential windfall piques Park and Parbery

One person “quaking” Clive Palmer could not possibly be living in fear of at the moment is the honourable Kenneth J Martin, the West Australian Supreme Court justice whose judgments have in recent months put Palmer’s listed resources vehicle Mineralogy on the cusp of a potentially sizeable windfall. Thanks to the judge, Palmer is one step away away from an interim payment of US$10,690,270.50 (AU$13,917.00) with the…

FEG letters

Fees, Liquidators, Regulation/Legislation 10 February 2017

FEG letters spoiled Christmas for some

On December 19 last year the industrious litigators heading the Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG) Recovery Program got the two things they must’ve wanted most. A Commonwealth decree declaring their pilot program permanent, and more funding. At around the same time, a number of liquidators received correspondence from the FEG Recovery team. Apparently the letters – authored SiN understands by Arnold Bloch Leibler – requested that…

ASIC inquiry

Discipline, Liquidators, Regulation/Legislation 10 February 2017

ASIC inquiry into Wily and Hurst branded “Kafkaesque”

Subversive utterances were overheard in the corridors of law yesterday, after ASIC’s application for an inquiring into the conduct of liquidators Andrew Wily and David Hurst ran into resistance at the first directions. The moment he was able, Wily’s barrister Farid Assif leapt to his feet and attacked the form and process of ASIC’s application, demanding it be simplified and insisting that no order could…