Pitcher Partners’ Andrew Yeo. Pitcher Partners’ Gess Rambaldi. Water rights, unending ATO audits and internet scams – Pitchers Partners duo Andrew Yeo and Gess Rambaldi have had quite a time of it in respect of the bankruptcy of Victorian dairy farmer Peter Alan Sandles, and that’s without being heavied by the Inspector General in Bankruptcy. The intriguing tale comes to us via Federal Circuit Court…
ADVERTORIAL Colliers’ Ian Pert. Ian Pert is a National Director of Colliers International Project Leaders, who provide Project and Cost Management Services through Australia. This paper has been prompted by the impact of COVID-19, which has created a large amount of speculation in the construction market about the potential for construction projects to fail. As construction projects slow, due to loss of productivity on site…
Deloitte’s Sal Algeri. It was lessors gone feral in correspondence between legal representatives of aircraft owners and Virgin’s voluntary administrators (VAs) last week as the owners of the (mostly) grounded fleet sought to extract agreements and undertakings in exchange for refraining from challenging the VA’s application to extend their exemption from personal liability for aircraft lease payments to May 26. The lessors are owed around…
Opinion Mukhtader Mohammed – the aviation specialist is on the front line in the VA’s negotiations with aircraft lessors. There’s certainly been a bit said about the myriad relationships existing between insolvent aviator Virgin Australia and Deloitte, the big four professional services firm to which Virgin’s four voluntary administrators (VA) belong. The DIRRI lodged by the Deloitte four detailed the extent of the relevant relationships,…
Cor Cordis NSW partner Ozem Kassem. Image courtesy Cor Cordis. It’s probably not every day the chief professional body for registered liquidators and bankruptcy trustees cops a subpoena but it happened recently in regard to former member and Cor Cordis partner Ozem Kassem. Kassem was expelled from Australian Restructuring Insolvency and Turnaround Association (ARITA) in April 2018 for refusing to engage an independent assessor to…
KPMG’s Gayle Dickerson. KPMG’s Ryan Eagle Another day, another judgement detailing the havoc wreaked on the voluntary administrations process (VAs) by COVID-9. In Eagle, in the matter of Techfront Australia Pty Limited (administrators appointed) [2020] FCA 542 Justice Kathleen Farrell provided a conveniently succinct account of the obstacles the virus had placed in the path of KPMG partners Ryan Eagle and Gayle Dickerson, who were…
Deloitte’s Vaughan Strawbridge. KordaMentha’s Mark Korda. As significant a news story as Deloitte’s appointment as voluntary administrators (VAs) of Virgin Australia Group is, it pales beside the unsubstantiated scuttlebutt upon which iNO routinely latches like a vengeful lamprey with a surfeit of monarchs. Simply put, the mail going around is that KordaMentha co-founder Mark Korda is less than impressed at being overlooked for this historic…
dVT’s Suelen McCallum. dVT’s Riad Tayeh dVT duo Suelen McCallum and Riad Tayeh haven’t had the best of starts to the year of the sneezing pangolin with the Disciplinary Tribunal of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CAANZ) dishing out fines and a professional censure in respect of a breach of the accounting profession’s byzantine APES code. As well as being slugged $8,500 each for…
Liquidator Schon Condon. Unreasonable and adversarial are terms no liquidator wants used to characterise their conduct and iNO’s mail is that Parramatta-based practitioner Schon Condon will appeal a judgment that’s branded him as both and labelled him a recidivist into the bargain. In the matter of Azmac Pty Limited (in liquidation) (No 2) [2020] NSWSC 363 NSW Supreme Court judge Kelly Rees last week ordered…
dVT’s Riad Tayeh dVT’s Antony de Vries There’s a line in the television series Mad Men where Roger Sterling of fictional advertising agency Sterling Cooper says: “advertising’s a great business, except for the clients”. Some Liquidators might feel that sentiment could equally apply to the business of insolvency, except “clients” – at least in the case of dVT founders Anton de Vries and Riad Tayeh…