Articles by Peter Gosnell

Bankruptcy judge lashes law firm for informality

Federal Circuit and Family Court judge Sophie Given. AIIP President Shabnam Amirbeaggi. Insolvency practitioner and AIIP president Shabnam Amirbeaggi would have been relieved last week that it wasn’t her lawyers who recently attracted the ire of Federal Circuit judge Sophie Given. As trustee in bankruptcy of one Maureen Billiau, Amirbeaggi has been frustrated in her efforts to realise estate property and so she went to…


VAs win six more months as receivers suppress

FTI Consulting’s Kate Warwick. KPMG’s David Hardy. Thanks to a judge’s preparedness to make suppression orders iNO can’t say as much as we reckon should be said about yesterday’s application by the administrators of failed cosmetics group BWX Pty Limited for an extension of the period in which to convene the second meeting of creditors. The application was the second made by FTI Consulting’s Joe…


Law firm sued after asking CBA to appoint receivers

Cor Cordis partner Sam Kaso. Beware the company director who emerges restored to competency after a stint in a psychiatric institution. That’s the lesson one law firm is learning in the Supreme Court of Victoria. Of course, said law firm is doing all it can to persuade the court that the lesson is not its to learn, and that the director seeking to impose it…


How not to go about replacing a trustee

DW Advisory’s Paul Weston. It perhaps comes as no surprise that a man who’s defrauded our electoral processes, assaulted his missus, thumped a journalist, forged documents, and been banned, bankrupted and gaoled, might also find reasons to be aggrieved with his trustee. Nor does it surprise iNO that a court, having considered the numerous grounds advanced to justify an inquiry into the trustee’s conduct, might…


Old Chadwickian off the hook after 17 years

Hall Chadwick’s Richard Albarran. Etienne Lawyers Steven Brown. A judge of the NSW Supreme Court yesterday delivered the coup de grace to long standing allegations of dishonesty and breaches of duty by a lawyers and a liquidator, thus bringing to an end a saga that’s hung over the heads of certain Hall Chadwick Sydney members past and present since 2006. “Mr Salmon is plainly aggrieved…


Liquidators, receivers in tug of war over $20 million

DV Recovery Management’s Daniel O’Brien. Oracle Insolvency Services’ Nick Cooper. With the fate of $20 million in a solicitor’s trust account uncertain and three sets of insolvency practitioners on the clock, who could fault any for contemplating liens? Certainly not iNO, who was roused from inattention during last Monday’s Corporation Lists in the NSW Supreme Court by barrister Ingrid King telling Justice Ashley Black that…


Judge lops six weeks off convening period extension

WA Insolvency Solutions’ Greg Prout. WA Insolvency Solutions’ Jimmy Trpcevski. The moral of this particular tale is that if you want a judge to approve your application to significantly extend the convening period, don’t starve them of detail. “It must be understood that requests for extensions of the convening period under s 439A are not simply available for the asking.” Supreme Court of West Australia…


If a DIRRI doesn’t succeed, declare and declare again

Grahame Ward. Image Mackay Goodwin. Domenic Calabretta. Image: Mackay Goodwin. Grahame Ward recently threw down the gauntlet to ASIC’s AI-backed monitoring regime when he lodged no less than three declarations of independence, relevant relationships and indemnities (DIRRIs) for the same company in less than three weeks. The defining characteristic of this effusion of filings was that each DIRRI identified a different referrer in respect of…


KPMG Audit partner in the jaws of dental dilemma

KPMG auditor Adam Twemlow. For a man who may soon find himself the target of yet another class action, KPMG auditor Adam Twemlow displayed a generally unflappable demeanour yesterday during several hours in a Federal Court witness box. The Partner In Charge of KPMG Enterprise, Metro Region in Brisbane was the last examinee for 2023 as part of public examinations brought by dentist investors burned…


Examinations raise questions about All Smiles DIRRI

Deloitte’s Luci Palaghia. Deloitte’s Tim Heenan. When it comes to making disclosures to demonstrate independence, possessing intimate knowledge about a corporation’s affairs can create problems, as would seem to be the case following further revelations about the collapse of the All Smiles dental chain. Acquiring all that knowledge can’t be achieved without a lot of involvement and for those insolvency practitioners registered to take on…