Grant Thornton’s Phil Campbell-Wilson. On the Sabbath the director gaveth, and on the Monday a judge tooketh away, though not before querying what he perceived as a lack of “professional skepticism” exhibited by one of Grant Thornton’s top insolvency and restructuring partners. The occasion was an application to adjourn a winding up hearing launched by the very recently appointed voluntary administrators (VAs) of Ming Tian…
Alleged fraudster Bill Papas is COVID positive and languishing in Athens a court heard yesterday, which might explain why Westpac Bank – which would love to ask the Forum Group founder about its missing $300 million – spent much of the afternoon monstering Domenic Calabretta and two of his Mackay Goodwin colleagues in regard to their role as voluntary administrators (VA) of 30 Forum Group entities.
McGrathNicol chairman Jason Preston. McGrathNicol partner Jason Ireland. It’s likely to be one of the highest profile appointments of 2021 so it was no surprise that when Westpac approached the Federal Court last week seeking to have provisional liquidators appointed to Forum Finance Pty Limited (Forum), Justice Michael Lee found himself presented with aspiring appointees from two of Australia’s most prominent insolvency firms. Westpac wanted…
O’Brien Palmer’s Daniel Frisken. What’s in a name? Well when you’re a registered liquidator authorised to accept formal appointments from directors there’s plenty, particularly when the sole director doing the appointing has four names and there’s a possibility he might be an undischarged bankrupt. The RegLiq in question in this intriguing case is O’Brien Palmer partner Daniel Frisken, who was appointed administrator of builder NPH…
Towards the end of the hearing of a liquidator removal application yesterday, the presiding judge mused that whilst he was unlikely to find that GS Andrews Advisory principal Greg Andrews has demonstrated bias as liquidator of Candlebrush Investments Pty Ltd (Candlebrush), he might remove him anyway. The judicial contemplations were uttered by NSW Supreme Court judge Ashley Black after his honour had spent much of…
O’Brien Palmer’s Daniel Frisken. Hall Chadwick partner Sule Arnautovic. (Image: Hall Chadwick) As iNO readers are well aware, what the official ASIC record shows and what actually is are often not immediately reconciled. Up until Tuesday this week, the ASIC companies database listed property developer and aspiring mining magnate Ibrahim Chambour as a director of ICA Mining, along with one Anthony Ford. But when we…
O’Brien Palmer’s Daniel Frisken. (Image: O’Brien Palmer) Hall Chadwick partner Sule Arnautovic. (Image: Hall Chadwick) Everybody wants to be an iron ore magnate these days but liquidator Daniel Frisken’s foray into the mining and minerals game has come unstuck with the placing into voluntary administration (VA) of ICA Mining, a company which had until recently purported to be advancing the resurrection of the old Peko…
Cor Cordis partner Jeremy Nipps. Cor Cordis partner Barry Wight. Jeremy Nipps and Barry Wight are likely enjoying getting their teeth into an administration of the scale of troubled gold miner Adaman Resources and that includes coping with challenges to the validity of their appointment as well as dealing with assertive creditors seeking intel and assertive directors asserting privilege over that intel. As is detailed…
O’Brien Palmer’s Daniel Frisken. O’Brien Palmer’s Daniel Frisken might be feeling a little uneasy after NSW Supreme Court judge Kate Williams this week refused his application seeking to claw back $740,000 in preferences paid to the ATO by labour hire company Pacific Steelfixing Pty Ltd (Pacific). This is because In the matter of Pacific Steelfixing Pty Ltd [2021] NSWSC 655 the judge described as not…
CJG Advisory’s Mathew Gollant. Hall Chadwick partner Sule Arnautovic. (Image: Hall Chadwick) iNO can but imagine what might be afoot when an entity like the Nissan Motor Company (Australia) (NMA) replaces an incumbent liquidator via an application to court when NMA is the only creditor and therefore would have had no trouble replacing the incumbent at the first meeting. From what can be gleaned from…