RSM’s Peter Marsden and Richard Stone have avoided having their remuneration on the Cardinal Project Services administration inducted into the cult of proportionality after one of the concept’s most ardent advocates dismissed a creditor’s application for a fee review. In his judgment of July 12, 2017 Justice Paul Brereton outlined how since their appointment – initially as voluntary administrators (VAs) in 2011 – the RSM…
Mackay Goodwin principal Domenic Calabretta may be overseas but that is not impeding the progress of some potential grief around an alleged lack of independence working its way towards him via a hearing in the NSW Supreme Court later this year. The grief is in the form of untested allegations – which may or may not be frivolous and/or vexatious – that the fees charged…
Henry Kazar received a less than ideal send off to the financial year thanks to Justice John Griffiths, who on June 30 decided that the EY partner’s claim for $64,390.50 was coming it a trifle high given Kazar and his team laboured for years to engineer a land sale that raised all of fifty grand. Kazar applied to the Federal Court in April of this year to have…
The Federal Court has a delivered a wide ranging judgment on the disposal of trust assets by liquidators and receiver/managers that will have the Department of Employment’s FEG recovery unit abuzz as it prepares its appeal to the decision of Amerind Pty Ltd (receivers and managers apptd) (in liq) [2017] VSC 127 (23 March 2017). In Kite v Mooney, in the matter of Mooney’s Contractors Pty…
RSM Australia partner David Kerr is the latest practitioner to learn that a truly painstaking accounting of the nature of work done, why it was done, why staff of certain seniority were allocated to do it and a detailed justification of the hours spent are the new normal for insolvency professionals seeking fee approval from the courts. In the matter of Hunter Valley Dental Surgery Pty…
PwC’s Sam Marsden and Derrick Vickers look to have wangled a result from the West Australian Supreme Court in their fight with receivers over a deed fund surplus on the Pluton Resources job. In November last year the pair – in their capacity as Pluton’s liquidators – applied for orders relating to the question of Pluton’s entitlement to $835,021.94, left in a deed fund following…
The process may have been akin to pulling teeth with an auditor present but liquidator Cliff Sanderson has at last obtained court approval for his final fees in the painful winding up of Sakr Nominees. NSW Supreme Court Justice Ashley Black on Monday ruled in favour of Sanderson’s claim for an additional $63,577.80c in fees including GST for the period from November 3 2014 to November…
There cannot be too many prominent rulings on insolvency practitioner remuneration that are not invoked at some point In the matter of Banksia Securities Ltd (in liq) (receivers and managers appointed) [2017] NSWSC 540. In approving claims for pay lodged by Banksia’s special purpose receivers (SPRs) – who are also its liquidators – NSW Supreme Court judge Fabian Gleeson has gone a good way to emptying…
It’s been a while coming but with public examinations scheduled for the end of this month it’s no surprise that the colourful figures behind the Dyldam construction group have finally brokered a deal with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) over a multi-million dollar tax debt. 70 cents in the dollar, with $1 million paid up front and the balance to be handed over in seven months….
Pending any appeal from Tasmanian millionaire Jan Cameron, KordaMentha partners Rahul Goyal and David Winterbottom have won the right to a $2 million success fee which formed part of the remuneration they agreed to with Cameron when she appointed the receivers of DSG Holdings. In Bicheno Investments Pty Ltd v David John Winterbottom [2017] NSWSC 536 (9 May 2017) Justice Robert McDougall yesterday dismissed Cameron’s application for…