Greyhouse Partners’ Ben Verney. Commercial judgment appears to have won out in respect of a dispute over the fees of a former voluntary administrator (VA) who refused to comply with a costs order while his remuneration remained unapproved. The recently resolved stand off involved Greyhouse Partners Ben Verney, who was formerly voluntary administrator (VA) of Icon Construction Australia (NSW) Pty Ltd (ICA NSW), the company’s…
Bradd Morelli may have, as a judge said this week, submitted a great many remuneration approval applications during his 15 years as a registered liquidator, but experience doesn’t excuse even veteran practitioners from providing supporting evidence sufficient for courts to affirm applications for fees. “I don’t have the evidence necessary to determine it.” Justice Ashley Black. That maxim, or at least the version Morelli’s solicitor…
Menzies Advisory’s Michael Caspaney. Cor Cordis partner Rachel Burdett. There are so many elements to the Modscape Pty Ltd saga that it’s difficult to know which strand to yank first but in homage to our abyssal tabloid instincts iNO will commence with the most recent, involving a former liquidator of the company whose fees and costs are under review. That review has been brought by…
Hogan Sprowles partner Brendan Copeland. Fish rotting under floorboards, anti-vacaters, rivals threatening to scrutinise your fees and freezing orders impeding progress – as liquidator and receiver of Fellmane Pty Ltd Brendan Copeland has earned his fees. Certainly NSW Supreme Court judge Ashley Black thought so when on Monday he found no reason to block or discount the Hogan Sprowles partner’s claim for $263,000 in remuneration,…
KPMG partner Stephen Vaughan. KPMG Partner Ian Hall. The interim divvie’s distributed, it’s twin awaits only delivery of a judgment reserved and now an application for remuneration – brought by BBY Limited’s liquidators Stephen Vaughan and Ian Hall in 2017 and adjourned in 2018 – has at last come to pass. “The total value of the assets (CSAs and recoveries) for which the liquidators have…
KPMG’s Matthew Woods There’s a line between acceptable levels of risk taking on behalf of creditors and forcing one’s hand in pursuit of fees, and as Federal Court judge Darren Jackson recently explained, material distinctions in respect of indemnities when things go south. Or in this case west, where those material differences came to the fore when KPMG’s Perth-based head honcho of restructuring Matt Woods…
McGrathNicol chairman Jason Preston. McGrathNicol partner Jason Ireland. Federal Court judge Michael Lee wasn’t going to let a funding agreement between Westpac and Forum Finance Group’s liquidators pass without comment when the draft deed came before his honour last Friday. The agreement, which will enable liquidators Jason Preston, Jason Ireland and Kathy Sozou of McGrathNicol to pay their remuneration and expenses, contained two elements upon…
FMIF receiver David Whyte. FTI Consulting’s John Park. Ex-BDO partner David Whyte might have departed the profession for a life after insolvency but retirement doesn’t mean the abandonment of entitlement to fees incurred, as can be seen from Bruce & Anor v LM Investment Management Limited & Ors [2021] QSC 203. In this long running saga Whyte as receiver of LM First Mortgage Investment Fund…
McGrathNicol’s Jonathan Henry McGrathNicol Partner Kathy Sozou. When liquidators accidentally pay themselves remuneration from trust assets for work unrelated to the recovery and preservation of those trust assets then a reckoning is nigh. For McGrathNicol duo Jonathan Henry and Kathy Sozou, that reckoning took the form of an application in the NSW Supreme Court recently for retrospective approval of a sum of remuneration – substantially…
Suspended trustee Peter Macks. You would think the transfer of a bankrupt estate from one trustee to two others would be straightforward. It’s not like there’s no precedent upon which practitioners and their lawyers can rely. Straightforward however is not a word that could be applied to the brouhaha that’s engulfed Worrells’ Daniel Cvitanovic and Steve Hundy, inheritors of an estate formerly in the hands…