BDO partner Matthew Blum. BDO partner Luke Andrews. Practitioners accepting gigs as voluntary administrators (VAs) after winding up proceedings have been commenced continue to be cannon fodder for Australia’s largest creditor. Recently we reported on a VA’s challenge to the hearing of an application to wind up of Rio Dorado Limited via an application for an adjournment. The argument was that creditors should have the…
Piper Alderman partner Thomas Russell. Hegarty Legal’s Peter Hegarty. It can’t be easy for lawyers making their bones in the insolvency space. You need worthwhile referrers and clarity about whether you’re going to implicitly trust your clients or proceed on the basis that such a course would constitute an intolerable risk. Whichever path is chosen there’s always the potential for uncertainties around retainers and ….
Nelson McKinnon’s Steve Agosta. Insolvency Option’s Darren Vardy. Punching the wrong key and submitting an incorrect amount – the dreaded “fat finger” error – rarely attracts attention if the sum is less than intended. When it’s more it’s a different story. When it’s more iNO for one sits up and takes notice, not that iNO was slouching at the back of Federal Court 19B on…
Hall Chadwick partner John Shanahan. iNO had to suppress a grimace on seeing the financial complaints ombudsman David Locke spruik the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s (CBA) latest anti-scam initiatives over the weekend. The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) ceo and chief ombudsman did his bit for the bank by posting on Linked In a Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) piece on CBA’s Scam Indicator and NameCheck…
Federal Circuit and Family Court judge Sophie Given. AIIP President Shabnam Amirbeaggi. Insolvency practitioner and AIIP president Shabnam Amirbeaggi would have been relieved last week that it wasn’t her lawyers who recently attracted the ire of Federal Circuit judge Sophie Given. As trustee in bankruptcy of one Maureen Billiau, Amirbeaggi has been frustrated in her efforts to realise estate property and so she went to…
Cor Cordis partner Sam Kaso. Beware the company director who emerges restored to competency after a stint in a psychiatric institution. That’s the lesson one law firm is learning in the Supreme Court of Victoria. Of course, said law firm is doing all it can to persuade the court that the lesson is not its to learn, and that the director seeking to impose it…
Hall Chadwick’s Richard Albarran. Etienne Lawyers Steven Brown. A judge of the NSW Supreme Court yesterday delivered the coup de grace to long standing allegations of dishonesty and breaches of duty by a lawyers and a liquidator, thus bringing to an end a saga that’s hung over the heads of certain Hall Chadwick Sydney members past and present since 2006. “Mr Salmon is plainly aggrieved…
Cathro & Partners’ Andrew Blundell. RSM’s Richard Stone. Cathro Partners Andrew Blundell and Simon Cathro must have thought that they had a good chance of retaining their appointments as voluntary administrators (VAs) of failed chartered accounting firm Talbots Pty Ltd when proceedings commenced yesterday morning. Those proceedings constituted the hearing of an application brought by the Deputy Commissioner of Taxation (DCoT) for the immediate winding…
Allens partner Phil Blaxill. WLP Restructuring’s Glenn Livingstone. Liquidators receiving letters from a lawyer asking for this or that is no rare thing, but when such a letter specifies information relating to companies to which the liquidator has never been appointed well, that ain’t so common. What is common though is the try on, and the correspondence Glenn Livingstone and Scott Pascoe received on September…
Grant Thornton’s John McInerney. Grant Thornton’s Phil Campbell-Wilson. It all started when lawyer Thomas Russell sent an email on July 2, 2019 to then Jirsch Sutherland partner Sule Arnautovic. Russell wanted to set up a time to discuss a potential VA appointment. He told Arnautovic he acted for Florian Heymans, the sole director of two companies operating under the Robust Construction Services Pty Ltd banner….