KPMG’s Martin Jones. With wounds still agape after the whuppin’ meted out by West Australian Supreme Court judge Kenneth Martin on December 1, one wonders what fresh hiding to nothing ASIC is on as it seeks to have three insolvency practitioners from KPMG punted as the administrators of Salt Lake Potash Limited (SLPL). At a hearing in The West Australian Supreme Court this week SLPL…
Morton + Lee Insolvency’s Gavin Morton. “No”. With that one word Australia’s collective population of registered liquidators and insolvency specialists let out a resounding cheer, because it meant that the Full Bench of the Federal Court had decided not to ruin their Christmas. “The creditor claims to be entitled to set off its obligation under s 588FF of the Act to repay the preference received…
Liquidator Moira Carter. Federal Court judge Scott Goodman has rejected arguments seeking to block an amendment to an originating process that calls for the removal of the liquidator of Australian Vocational Learning Institute Pty Ltd (AVLI). As told in LFI Ventures Pty Ltd v Carter, in the matter of Australian Vocational Learning Institute Pty Ltd (in liq) [2021] FCA 1555, the arguments against inclusion of…
Moore Recovery’s Desmond Teng. Every week another new insolvency firm seems to emerge as practitioners of an optimistic bent bet on the resumption of a rate of external administrations consistent with Capitalism’s proper and unimpeded functioning. This week iNO chanced upon an example not so much of a new occurrence as of a regeneration, through freshly minted Moore Recovery. As readers will be aware, the…
Telling an insolvency practitioner their application for additional remuneration is “misconceived” is like telling Bill Shorten his plan for getting the ALP into power would work if only the plan’s primary beneficiary wasn’t himself. Red rags ain’t in it. So when an eminence of the Federal Circuit Court in Tasmania told trustee Brett Harrison that his application for a modest sum of future additional remuneration…
David Ingram has left Hall Chadwick to launch I&R Advisory. Liquidator David Ross will join David Ingram in 2022. Former Hall Chadwick partner David Ingram had obviously been plotting his exit from the national mid-tier for some time before his decision to pull the pin was revealed publicly in orders made in the Federal Court on Monday. In the wake of an application pursuant to…
Worrells partner Jason Bettles. Barring settlement at mediation or ASIC’s case collapsing for want of competence the next 18 months represents a period of nagging uncertainty for Jason Bettles. Orders made in the Federal Court in November have paved the way for the Worrells Queensland partner to be tried next year on allegations of complicity in an illegal phoenix scheme. The allegations – which Bettles…
KPMG’s Andrew Smith. KPMG’s Martin Jones. ASIC’s record of litigation against registered liquidators continues to resist improvement, with a judge yesterday labelling the regulator’s bid to induce him to slash the fees of two voluntary administrators (VAs) as “unprincipled” and “wholly pointless”. “It was never viable to differentiate work that was said to be ‘tainted’, from work said not to be. If it is ASIC’s…
Savants’ Adrian Duncan. Adrian Duncan, the registered liquidator and a key investor in the failed 2005 bid to list Knights Insolvency Administration on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) is rumoured to have left Britain for South America after the UK regulator stripped him of his license and his firm Savants Restructuring was placed in administration. Three years after the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England…
BCR Advisory’s John Morgan. Sydney liquidator John Morgan copped the treatment in the Federal Court witness box yesterday as a three day hearing kicked off to determine if a company he de-registered more than three years ago should be reinstated. If Morgan’s application succeeds and the BCR Advisory principal is also rewarded with the pooling order he seeks then FEG Recoveries will bankroll the commencement…