Discipline

QLD liquidator forced to accept ASIC EU

Queensland liquidator Peter Dinoris has been forced to enter into an enforceable undertaking with ASIC in relation to the Asden Developments scandal, where Dinoris’s failure to make efforts to contact a director who’d siphoned large sums from a company attracted stiff criticism in the courts. The subsequent publicity saw Dinoris part company with Vincents and set up Artemis Insolvency. In a media release published this…


Industry acts as Treasury releases phoenix reforms

Federal Treasury yesterday released its Reforms to combat illegal phoenix activity – Draft Legislation and the insolvency industry’s key association produced a summary of the exposure draft’s key points and invited members to provide feedback for inclusion in the Australian Restructuring Insolvency & Turnaround Association’s (ARITA) submission. The reforms – which are a centrepiece of Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer’s anti-phoenix crusade, will: Create new phoenix offences to target those…


Comment: Industry funding could decimate profession

INO was having coffee with an insolvency practitioner (IP) the other day when the conversation turned to the Industry Funding Model (IFM). Pulling a document from his briefcase the IP showed how the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) had arrived at a sum of almost $20,000 it intends to claim from his modest single liquidator firm when it begins issuing invoices in January, 2019. Confirming that…


Liquidators and ex-Labor MP to be grilled by FEG

Along with a luminary of the Labor party’s past, Veritas Advisory’s David Iannuzzi and Steve Naidenov have been summoned to appear for public examination in August in relation to the liquidation of the MK Floors Group. Regular INO readers may recall that after Iannuzzi and Naidenov were appointed voluntary administrators (VAs) of the MK Floors Group on October 10, 2016 they had to fend off…


Expelled ARITA member now bankrupt

It’s been an eventful few weeks for far north Queensland liquidator and former ARITA member Justin James Cadman. On June 6 ARITA announced that it had expelled him from the association after ARITA’s Professional Conduct Committee ruled that he’d brought the reputation of ARITA and the profession into disrepute. That was Wednesday last week. Two days later he was bankrupted in the Federal Court, we believe following…


Worrells referrer admits to conduct failure

The public examination of persons related to the failure of Waltek Industries has again exposed the vulnerabilities inherent in the referral relationship, vulnerabilities which if ignored can rebound. Louttit & Associates’ Jamieson Louttit has been conducting examinations into the curious circumstances of Waltek’s near simultaneous incorporation and failure in June 2015, assisted with funding from the Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG) recovery division. His predecessors on…


McKenna ousted by court after resisting creditors

A resolution put to a meeting of creditors by an owners corporation seeking the removal of Henry McKenna as liquidator of Iris Diversified Property Pty Ltd has been confirmed by the NSW Supreme Court this week. On Tuesday, June 6, 218 Justice Ashley Black ordered that the soon-to-be ex-Jirsch Sutherland partner be replaced by O’Brien Palmer’s Chris Palmer and Liam Bailey and that the incoming appointees’ costs by…


ARITA expels third member in two months

Whilst INO is loath to encourage a perception that it should change its masthead to “Expulsion Monthly”, it behoves us to report that the Australian Restructuring Insolvency & Turnaround Association (ARITA) has cast out another member, the third such eructation since April. The latest to fall foul of the ARITA Code of Professional Practice is Queensland practitioner Justin James Cadman, who readers may recall was…


Promotion: AIIP Conference tackles big questions

Some of the profession’s most pressing questions will be explored and potential solutions debated at the inaugural Association of Independent Insolvency Practitioners (AIIP) Conference to be held next month in Canberra. Questions around safe harbour; pre-packs; litigation funding, law reform and what the future might have in store will all be canvassed at the Disruption in the Insolvency Industry Conference on June 28 and 29…


Administrator flaunts rival’s VU to creditors

The second meeting of creditors of failed Victorian builder Project Group Construction on Wednesday afternoon will go down as being notable for two reasons. This was the first attempt by creditor activist Subbies United (SU) to remove incumbent administrators and replace them with its preferred appointee in Victoria, a tactic SU has employed successfully in Queensland on several occasions. The attempt failed, with incumbents Ivan…