Rodgers Reidy WA partner Jack James. Rodgers Reidy WA partner Paula Jones. A group of creditors are hunting three Rodgers Reidy scalps after one of them used their casting vote to get a divisive DoCA over the line at the second meeting of creditors of Wave Projects Pty Ltd. iNO’s mail is that in the event that the deed’s opponents succeed in having the DoCA…
PKF partner Simon Thorn. A NSW Supreme Court decision has visited total defeat upon liquidator Simon Thorn almost two years after a Local Court magistrate delivered him victory. In BounceLED Pty Ltd v Clear Skies Corp Pty Ltd (in liq) (No 2) [2023] NSWSC 810 judge Mark Richmond yesterday ruled that not only should Thorn pay BounceLED Pty Ltd’s (BounceLED) costs on the ordinary basis…
Woodgate & Co’s Giles Woodgate. After six months on light duties those individuals called upon to consider the allegations of misconduct that ASIC routinely levels against registered liquidators suddenly have a full in-tray. “The committee must decide within 45 business days after interviewing you whether or not you should be registered as a liquidator: s20-20(3)”. ASIC Regulatory Guide 258. Last week Sydney liquidator Giles Woodgate’s…
Mackay Goodwin principal Domenic Calabretta. Mackay Goodwin director Edwin Narayan. Two Sydney practitioners who tried to stall a winding up so they could put a DoCA proposal to creditors have lost the application and the gig after a court refused to adjourn the hearing and sided with the petitioning creditor’s preferred nominee as liquidator. The bid for an adjournment in the matter of The Deputy…
PwC’s Simon Theobald PwC’s Robert Ditrich. You might have thought that when Perth-based litigation funder GT Capital Partners imploded last year with its founders exchanging aspersions at 10 paces, whoever was appointed to clean up the mess would have their work cut out for them. Well as it turns out, a DoCA’s been effectuated, new directors have taken over and the Supreme Court of West…
McGrathNicol partner Keith Crawford. McGrathNicol partner Matthew Caddy. Proceedings in the Federal Court yesterday aptly demonstrated the dangers insolvency practitioners face when accepting appointments as administrators in the middle of intractable shareholder disputes. At a hearing before Federal Court judge Tim McEvoy in Melbourne, counsel for the administrators of Agrifunder Holdings Pty Ltd appeared seeking approval for Agrifunder to enter into a deed of refinance…
O’Brien Palmer’s Liam Bailey. Christmas spirit was in limited supply at the meeting of creditors of bankrupt builder Tony Saaib late last year, and that’s perhaps understandable. Convened on December 23, 2022 creditors had assembled to consider just one resolution. The removal of the trustee of Saaib’s bankrupt estate and his replacement with rivals joint and several. “I advise that the Indemnity is not payable…
Chris Baskerville of Jirsch Sutherland. Insolvency practitioners need to be a thick-skinned and philosophical lot. Resentful creditors, regulators inclined to scape goat and duplicitous directors make for a generally adversarial stakeholder group that’s all too eager to pillory appointees at the merest whiff of an oversight. It’s no profession for those who need to be loved and when a practitioner cops a kicking they need…
KordaMentha partner Kate Conneely. KordaMentha partner Rahul Goyal. Those few independent insolvency firms that operate at the top end of the market – McGrathNicol and KordaMentha specifically – can have a hard time clearing the conflict bar. Secureds are forever knocking on their doors, begging to avail themselves of their forensic expertise and often they’ll come knocking again once the investigating accountant (IA) reports have…
Dermott McVeigh of Avior Consulting. Over in the West the pool of formal insolvency appointees might more correctly be described as a puddle and when a practitioner accepts a job involving related entities it can result in some entertaining DIRRIs indeed. One example which recently caught iNO’s eye was a declaration from ex-Ferrier Hodgson partner Dermott McVeigh, who on June 8, 2021 appointed himself liquidator…