McGrathNicol’s Rob Kirman. McGrathNicol’s Jamie Harris. While the law around how insolvency practitioners deal with trust assets has evolved exponentially in recent years, circumstances peculiar to a particular appointment can still confound appointees’ aims when it comes to asset pursuit, as Jamie Harris and Rob Kirman know very well. “Without determining the question, I would make the point that if an application to be appointed…
Hall Chadwick partner Sule Arnautovic. Dermott McVeigh of Avior Consulting. Back to the drawing board was the message for Avior Consulting’s Dermott McVeigh after a judge refused the Perth-based practitioner’s application for approval of a lift in receivership fees. For Hall Chadwick’s Sule Arnautovic however, who was also in the Corporations List queue on Monday applying for approval of remuneration earned whilst an administrator and…
Being non-committal can get a liquidator a long way. After all, far from sitting on the fence, neither consenting or objecting can show that the external administrator is prudently preserving powder in circumstances where there may be no fight to have. But neutrality only gets you so far unless you’re Swiss, and when tricky and contested questions around the proceeds of asset dispersals emerge, the…
BRI Ferrier partner Peter Krejci. Dealing with the disgruntled is part and parcel of any practitioner’s daily grind but sometimes an example of resistance emerges that stands out as an exemplar of its kind. In the ongoing tussle between ENA Development Pty Ltd liquidator Peter Krejci and a Mr Robert Sebie, Krejci and his lawyers at ERA Legal have had to repel allegations of conflict…
The late Murray Godfrey. Ex-liquidator David Iannuzzi. It’s almost three years since Federal Court judge Angus Stewart made orders cancelling the liquidator’s registration of David Nicholas Iannuzzi. Since that time the liquidators charged with undertaking the work that Iannuzzi didn’t have been investigating, gathering evidence, settling claims where they could and commencing proceedings where they couldn’t. Those claims now on foot, which involve actions in…
PwC partner Martin Ford. iNO would like to make it clear at the outset that in respect of aspersions cast on the conduct of PwC partners Martin Ford and Melissa Humann in the winding up of GTW Investments (Aust) Pty Limited (GTW), the creditor doing the disparaging has form. Back in 2020 the Mitris family’s Pacreef Investments (Pacreef), which yesterday intervened in proceedings brought by…
Deloitte’s David Mansfield. An Australian court has wound up an Australian company with operating subsidiaries offshore despite an 11th hour, expensive and likely futile bid for an adjournment brought on the basis that restructuring proceedings had been commenced in Singapore and the foreign subsidiaries needed only a short time to develop a proposal. Vietnam Industrial Investments (VII) is described as a holding company for subsidiaries…
Deloitte’s Sal Algeri. Deloitte’s Robert Woods. When aspiring developers offer units in a trust in exchange for funds from investors, and those investors then sell units in their own sub trusts to less sophisticated sub-investors, it can present any external administrators who might subsequently be appointed with quite the conundrum. “That being said, this proposed distribution method also appropriately and fairly allows for trade creditors…
Rodgers Reidy director Geoff Reidy. Seven years is a long time without a decent drink so liquidator Geoff Reidy will be relieved that a judge has at last granted him leave to imbibe. For the Rodgers Reidy co-founder the court’s approval means he can finally pour himself a pint of fees from the liquidation of Jainti Pty Ltd, a corporate trustee of the Zambito Trust…
Lowe Lippmann partner Gideon Rathner. Lowe Lippmann director Matt Sweeney. Insinuations about why PE Capital Nominees (Nominees) liquidator Matthew Sweeny presented for cross-examination this week have attracted a vigorous rebuttal from the Lowe Lippmann director’s counsel. “There were many propositions put to him by Mr Bick that he seemed reluctant to embrace.” Justice Tim McEvoy. In the Federal Court yesterday Ian Martindale KC for Nominees’…