Balance Insolvency principal Tim Cook. An abundance of caution. If ever there was a phrase that gets an airing in most if not all court applications it would be this, at least when those applications involve an insolvency practitioner seeking fee approval for work performed as both liquidator of a corporate trustee and receiver of the associated trust assets. The reason for the phrase’s frequency…
Olvera Advisors’ Kate Barnet. Olvera Advisors’ Damien Hodgkinson. The NSW Supreme Court of Appeal has overturned a decision that favoured the Commonwealth over a secured creditor in a dispute over which them was entitled to almost $2 million in Research & Development (R&D) tax refunds. In the primary decision delivered in March last year, NSW Supreme Court judge Ashley Black found that the refunds constituted…
SV Partners’ David Stimpson. PwC’s Melissa Humann. Good old Government. Neither model litigant nor it seems, lender be, at least not in the mind of one general purpose liquidator (GPL) sitting on millions of yet to be distributed dollars while special purpose liquidators (SPLs) do the investigatory hard yards. Such anxiety does this GPL harbour in regards to the New South Wales Government in its…
Insolvency marked another milestone last week when former Ferrier Hodgson partner Gary Trevor completed the torturous winding up of Bell Group NV (BGNV) almost three decades after being appointed liquidator by Australian courts of an administration ancillary to its parent insolvency in the Caribbean jurisdiction of what was then the Netherlands Antilles. In the Supreme Court of West Australia the Perth insolvency veteran obtained orders…
IRT Advisory’s Andrew Poulter. Following publication of lurid details involving sham arrangements, straw directors and shadowy puppet masters, iNO asked the liquidator responsible for uncovering the imbroglio if he’d reported his findings to ASIC. As it turns out, he had. IRT Advisory’s Andrew Poulter lodged a section 533(1) report with ASIC in January 2018 in respect of what smelled like the liquidation of convenience of…
The late Sam Henderson. Insolvency Options principal Darren Vardy. Recently deceased insolvency practitioner Sam Henderson was seemingly in the thick of things to the very end, with a Federal Court judgement detailing meetings the former Jirsch Sutherland partner had with a liquidator in the weeks before he was found dead at a North Sydney hotel on April 4. “I was satisfied that there was good…
Hamilton Murphy partner Trent Hancock. Liquidators with no funding will be relieved to learn that entering into a contract to assign a chose in action is not invalidated simply because it’s the assignee applying for court approval rather than the liquidator. The question came before NSW Supreme Court Corporations judge Ashley Black yesterday after two parties turned up seeking leave to be heard in opposition…
BRI Ferrier partner Peter Krejci. “Transcript! I must have transcript,” the appeals court president might well have thundered. When appellant court judges are delivered a white book unfit for a dog’s breakfast and receive material in their chambers on the morning of the hearing that hasn’t been served on the respondent well, tempest can be reliably forecast. And inevitably in such circumstances, a bench’s collective…
Hall Chadwick’s Richard Albarran. Hall Chadwick’s Richard Lawrence. A contested fee application scheduled for hearing in June is likely to give liquidators and the lawyers who act for them deep insights into how the courts view the always contentious issues of information provision, seniority and duplication of work. “I take issue with these allegations and moreover say that the ATO has no basis to question…
Steven Golledge SC. The Commissioner of Taxation’s (CoT) ears would’ve been aflame last week as Steven Golledge SC excoriated the highest tax officer in the land for repeatedly failing to preserve claims to millions lost to illegal phoenixing. As iNO reported in Banq Jurisdiction Case Could Limit Late Start Litigation, ex-clients of the controversial Banq Accountants & Advisers are seeking to overturn the basis on…