Fees

Majella Capital DoCA proponents defeated

Hall Chadwick’s aspirations to administer deeds of company arrangement (DoCAs) over the Majella group have been incinerated, with the creditors most critically burned by the property group’s implosion pairing up to vote down resolutions that would’ve seen a meeting adjourned so as to allow time for the issues impeding the DoCAs to be removed. Instead, Glenn Shannon, Richard Albarran and David Ingram must content themselves with…


Liquidator’s Levy could fuel phoenix phenomenon

It was late in 2016 when the Full Bench of the NSW Supreme Court of Appeal sat to hear why one of their own had, in his enthusiasm for applying the concept of proportionality to liquidator’s remuneration, charted a course described that day by the appellant’s counsel as “without juridical basis.” The appellant on that Wednesday in November was Cliff Sanderson, a registered liquidator. The legal…


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…


Court lops receivers’ fees by 50 per cent

It doesn’t do to mix your WIP. Nor does it do to confuse a judge. Hall Chadwick duo Richard Albarran and David Ross may have accidentally done both, and it’s cost them eighty grand. The recent lopping of around three quarters off their claim for remuneration as receivers of the DOH Family Trust follows a period during which Albarran and Ross have also acted as 1) voluntary administrators of…


VAs settle skirmish over Jamie Oliver accounts

Ask a judge to extend the convening period and he or she will generally want to know if the books and records are in the applicant’s possession and answering in the negative can jeopardise the chances of the extension being granted. Yet the BDO trio appointed voluntary administrators (VAs) of Jamie’s Italian Restaurant Group recently cajoled four extra months from the courts despite what Federal Court…


SPLs invokes irony in removal defence

Since Clive Palmer applied on the twelfth of April to remove those pesky special purpose liquidators (SPLs) from Queensland Nickel (QN), a Niagara of documentation has been filed. Applications, affidavits, submissions etc. Against this torrent the SPL’s Steve Parbery and Michael Owen of PPB Advisory have filed a truly voluminous reservoir of rebuttals in their defence. SiN’s been wading through the flood. Palmer is arguing…


SPLs installed as judge queries funding terms

Sibling liquidators Sule Arnautovic and Amanda Young were having a little trouble yesterday trying to persuade Federal Court Judge Kathleen Farrell to approve a funding deed that will govern $450,000 the Jirsch Sutherland pair are to deploy investigating an alleged phoenix transaction. The funding has been put up by GDK Projects, which on January 21, 2015 won judgment against Umberto Pty Ltd, the former operator of Candelori’s…


Liquidator and lawyer tangle over costs assessment

Seems that when a liquidator is being pursued for costs by a lawyer in a local court, trying to resolve the issues via the costs assessment process is not going to fly, at least not according to NSW Supreme Court judge Francois Kunc. WKA Legal Pty Ltd v Gleeson [2018] NSWSC 318 details how liquidator and Jones Partners principal Bruce Gleeson has for several years been at…


Liquidators capitulate to creditor as costs climb

There’s nothing like a review of remuneration, as ordered by Justice Paul “Proportionality” Brereton, to cull the swagger from an IP’s stride and this week it was Mackay Goodwin’s Domenic Calabretta and Grahame Ward stepping carefully as court was convened. In the matter of Securimax the pair have been on eggshells since August 2017 when Justice Brereton concluded that if administrators get 66 per cent of the…


Liquidator’s fee discount helps judge approve Rem.

It seems that when a liquidator applies to the court for approval of his or her remuneration, advising the judge that you’re offering a big discount doesn’t harm your chances. In Deputy Commissioner of Taxation v Addwealth Financial Services Pty Ltd (in liq) [2018] FCA 96 we learn that BRI Ferrier WA principal John Carrello sought judicial approval for fees of $25,000 plus GST and expenses for work Carrello…