ASIC

ASIC flips on the applicant the committee rejected

Lawyer Ben Sewell stared down ASIC to clinch restricted ticket. They say there is more than one way to skin a cat, though having limited familiarity with the skinning game iNO cannot vouch for the veracity of this disturbing adage. We can however see the maxim at work in the case of a recent registration of a Sydney lawyer as a liquidator. The mail crossing…


KordaMentha partner stripped of registration

KordaMentha Singapore partner Cameron Duncan. In the wake of a disciplinary committee ruling last month cashiering one of their own, iNO’s mail is that senior members of industry heavyweight KordaMentha are puzzled about the ruling and about ASIC’s decision this week to make the punishment public. The decision, delivered on February 28 and announced in a statement released by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission…


EY newbie a regulators’ favourite

Amos Insolvency’s Peter Amos. EY’s Robyn Duggan. If anyone was wondering why newish EY recruit Robyn Duggan took so few appointments in 2022 it was probably because for a fair part of that year she knew she was leaving KPMG, the firm that offered her a place after it swallowed Ferrier Hodgson in 2019. In the current financial year Duggan took just one appointment in…


Unresponsive liq to pay indemnity costs personally

Victorian liquidator Peter Goodin. We hear much about first responders but not so much about non responders. We might however hear a bit more after a Victorian liquidator was ordered to personally pay more than $21,000 in indemnity costs after he repeatedly failed to respond to a creditor’s correspondence. Given that the creditor had wanted the meeting to consider a resolution to replace the incumbent…


Practitioner self suspends as questions asked about $3m

Back in 2019 iNO reported on the appointment of a reviewing liquidator to assess the files of a practitioner located in south western Sydney. Naturally enough the findings of such reviews are confidential but the outcomes that flow from them can’t be concealed permanently. Last year ASIC imposed a restraint on the practitioner’s registration such that he couldn’t accept any further insolvency appointments, starting from…


Bankrupt ex-liquidator sitting on $5 million in super

Bankrupt dVT Group co-founder Antony de Vries. There you are, trying to enjoy retirement – albeit as an undischarged bankrupt – when the missus declares that being a part time ballet teacher leaves her both ill-equipped and without time to manage the marital super. Can a bloke not get a moment’s peace from the burden of managing money, even when you’re not supposed to have…


Stimpson stymied by SV Partners director’s partner

SV Partners’ David Stimpson. SV Partners Matthew Bookless. Liquidator David Stimpson is having to deal with some unwelcome complexities intruding into his management of the Youpla indigenous funeral fund debacle thanks to those pesky rules around independence and apprehensions of a lack thereof. Near as we can tell, the domino that precipitated the recently filed application by ASIC and the Department of Fair Trading (DFT)…


ATO among creditors objecting to ex-liquidators’ fees

Hall Chadwick’s Richard Lawrence. Hall Chadwick’s Richard Albarran. As iNO reported back in July, Hall Chadwick partners Richard Albarran and Richard Lawrence are determined to be paid for the work they did on the tempestuous Tauro Capital administration before creditors replaced them in October 2020. At the time iNO speculated that some creditors at least might be just as determined to deny them. We can…


Punters at odds with Trustee over betting scheme

PCI Partners director Philip Newman. Was it a Ponzi scheme? Or were the monies invested in the The Edge, the now notorious betting scam operated by incarcerated racing identity Bill Vlahos, held on trust? That is one of the key questions at the heart of a dispute playing out in the Federal Court between Vlahos’s trustee in bankruptcy and at least some of the scores…


Professional associations axe transgressors

Suspended trustee Peter Macks. Amos Insolvency’s Peter Amos. When a professional transgresses and regulators impose the requisite penalties it sometimes signals not so much an end to the matter as a green light for the commencement of a secondary round of censure. In this day and age professional associations have their own disciplinary procedures independent of conduct’s primary arbiters. When a member is sanctioned by…