Former liquidator Peter Andrew Amos (R) with his lawyer Clayton Davis outside the Downing Centre District Courts last week. Peter Andrew Amos will have to wait six months before learning if pinching almost $2.5 million is sufficient to see an ex-liquidator gaoled. Amos, who last December pleaded guilty to six counts of dishonestly using his position as an officer of a company to gain an…
This may be the cautionary tale to top them all. Levi Consulting’s David Levi. A registered liquidator, making submissions in respect of costs, has – unwittingly we presume – required a judge of the NSW Supreme Court to consider making adverse findings against him. The mother of all own goals, scored on the eve of the new year, though we won’t know till after 4:00pm…
Aston Chace’s Ian Niccol. Hall Chadwick’s Richard Albarran. When directors don’t get their preferred external administrator, the unwanted incumbent can anticipate consequences. When that company has a toe on a supposedly rich gold deposit then the unwanted appointee can expect those consequences to manifest swiftly, as Sydney insolvency practitioner Ian Niccol recently discovered. The Aston Chase principal was installed by the courts as liquidator of…
Worrells Chris Cook. You might think a sizeable share of $20 million, generated by receivers winding down a poisoned partnership, would be enough to satisfy the most exacting beneficiary. No. In the following case, Worrells Chris Cook and Raj Khatri not only had to respond to repeated inquiries from one of the members of the tainted alliance but had to neuter criticisms from a rival…
DV Recovery Management’s Daniel O’Brien. A shareholder dispute has spilled into the NSW Supreme Court with one of the warring factions seeking to oust voluntary administrators (VAs) of their company on the basis that a supposedly suspect Notice of Meeting meant the resolution passed to appoint VAs was invalid. In the court on Monday counsel for estate agent and creditor William Tianguang Bai of Bai…
SV Partners’ Jason Porter. It doesn’t matter if you have 25 years in the insolvency game and sit on the national board of ARITA. If a judge thinks you’ve delayed a winding up inappropriately and failed to show why fees claimed were reasonably incurred then you’re going to get clipped. This at least seems to be the message from NSW Supreme Court judge Kate Williams…
PKF’s Brad Tonks. There must have been much gleeful rubbing of hands yesterday after the NSW Supreme Court of Appeal exorcised the FEG demon in respect of whether a priority creditor’s claim to circulating assets ranks ahead of a liquidator’s claim for remuneration. “The central question before the primary judge and on appeal was whether s 561 of the Act applies and, if so, whether…
Mackay Goodwin’s director of insolvency operations Mitchell Ball. Domenic Calabretta. Amended originating processes, further amended originating processes, deeds of company arrangements and variants thereof – in the end perhaps it was all too much? “The orders in large part seek to bootstrap the obligations in the Amended DOCA by embodying those obligations in Court orders or otherwise to make specific orders in respect of matters…
Worrells partner Jason Bettles. Worrells principal James Robba. It was bound to happen. A new-ish law, aimed at distressed small businesses and intended to give their embattled owners a shot at survival, inevitably grants them potential scope to diminish the consequences of their actions, just like voluntary administration only cheaper. In the Federal Court yesterday, an example of the Small Business Restructuring Regime’s capacity to…
Liquidator Jason Bettles. Worrells principal Jason Bettles offered to agree to a suspension of his liquidator’s registration as part of a counter offer made more than 12 months before his four year legal battle with ASIC ended in August when the regulator’s case was dismissed and it was ordered to pay Bettles’ costs. As part of those costs orders, Federal Court judge Brigitte Markovic granted…