Pitcher Partners’ Andrew Yeo. Pitcher Partners’ Gess Rambaldi. Pitcher Partners’ Andrew Yeo and Gess Rambaldi are venturing into tricky legal waters as they seek to recover more than $1 million they’ve traced to companies linked to alleged phoenix mastermind, Philip Whiteman. In the Federal Court in Melbourne yesterday, the pair – who were first appointed liquidators of Whiteman’s Armstrong & Shaw Group of Companies (A&S…
McGrathNicol Partner Kathy Sozou. Image McGrathNicol. Ankura senior managing director Quentin Olde. While the extent of the impact on business of the COVID-19 pandemic remains unknown, what is certain is that Australia’s nascent safe harbour regime and the capacities of our insolvency firms are set to be tested like never before. Restructuring practitioners contacted this week confirmed they were fielding more enquiries from company directors…
McGrathNicol’s Barry Kogan. BDO’s Andrew Sallway. You have to hand it to former Max Brenner Australia voluntary administrator (VA) Barry Kogan and Kogan has to hand it to the company’s current liquidator, Andrew Sallway. At the most recent meeting of creditors of the insolvent confectioner, which has been in liquidation since October 2018, the McGrathNicol partner was on hand to explain to creditors why they…
Gavin Morton. There’s always potential for things to go a tad awry when your appointor’s an old mate and a tad awry is one way to describe how the liquidation of Screaming Eagle Pty Ltd’s panned out for Gavin Morton. Queensland-based Morton accepted an appointment as liquidator of the company in late 2016 from Screaming Eagle’s then director, Stuart Alan Dreves of Seaforth in Sydney….
Victorian liquidator Ross McDermott. Ross McDermott has been in the wars these last few years and the blood letting isn’t over. In what may turn out to be the penultimate engagement in Mcdermott’s various scraps with statutory authorities since he was hit with a three year suspension from taking appointments in 2016, the Victoria-based liquidator will later this year defend an application for an inquiry…
KordaMentha’s Rahul Goyal. KordaMentha’s Jennifer Nettleton Rahul Goyal and Jennifer Nettleton have been granted liberty to make misery for rival Schon Condon as they ponder whether or not to pursue a special costs order against him. Being the special purpose liquidators (SPLs) of former precious metal refiner ACN 154 520 199 Pty Ltd, the KordaMentha pair recently applied for approval of almost $385,000 in fees…
BRI Ferrier’s Andrew Cummings. You know the fates are against you when, in resisting the winding up of a company to which you’ve been appointed voluntary administrator (VA), a court erroneously inserts the names of rivals in orders that apply to yourself. Such was the experience yesterday for Jirsch Sutherland’s Trent Devine and Andrew Spring, who discovered – following inquiries by iNO – that the…
Deloitte’s Tim Norman. Plutus Payroll Australia (PPA) liquidators Deloitte’s Tim Norman and Sal Algeri seem to be inching closer to a point when they can apply the blowtorch to various individuals connected with this most notorious of tax-skimming scandals but given the assetless state of the entities to which they are appointed, getting there is costing a bomb. In the NSW Supreme court yesterday, lawyers…
Bankrupt and owing $26 million Sam Henderson. Insolvency practitioners presumably apply an exacting rigour to the management of their own financial affairs so your correspondent’s eyebrows headed for the stratosphere last week when we learned that bankrupt insolvency practitioner Sam Henderson apparently owes his creditors almost $26 million. The outlandish figure – the $26 mil, not Henderson – was contained in the first report to…
KPMG’s Stephen Vaughan. KPMG’s Gayle Dickerson. Back in mid-July liquidator David Iannuzzi was scheduled to endure three days of gruelling questioning in a Federal Court witness box. The examination was to be the start of the penultimate battle in a war of attrition that began back in September 2017 when the Commissioner of Taxation (CoT) filed a 92-page originating process that listed a most egregious…