Hall Chadwick’s Richard Albarran. Equititrust Income Fund receiver David Whyte. When you tell creditors that you won’t seek to recover your fees from a related entity and the receiver of that related entity is present, it’s best not to renege. Even the most well-meaning of practitioners can come to regret backflipping on an undertaking and in the case of Equititrust Limited (in Liquidation) (EL) and…
Cor Cordis partner Jeremy Nipps. i-Prosperity Underwriting receiver David Levi. Back in August 2020 iNO predicted that the liquidators appointed to various entities within the i-Prosperity group might have trouble persuading creditors to approve future resolutions pertaining to their remuneration. As confirmed by the Minutes of the most recent meeting of the i-Prosperity Pty Ltd Committee of Inspection (COI) that forecast was spot on. By…
LMFMIF receiver David Whyte. Almost a decade after he was appointed to oversee the winding up of the LM First Mortgage Income Fund (LMFMIF), former BDO partner David Whyte has all but brought this salutary tale of greed and leverage to a conclusion after a court approved the entry by Whyte into a settlement with Ernst & Young. The terms of the settlement – the…
Bankrupt IP Sam Henderson. Grant Thornton’s John McInerney. When a company owes the ATO $5 million and would have had an opportunity to pay it but for a settlement that saw it forgo $5 million of $8 million it was owed well, you have to wonder if the professionals engaged to advise on the deal were granted full access to all the facts? The question…
Hall Chadwick’s Cameron Shaw. HLB Mann Judd WA principal Kim Wallman. Liquidators and lawyers are no strangers to the try on and regardless of the ratio of success, it’s a practice very much based on the idea that if nothing is ventured, nothing can possibly be gained. Trying it on in respect of claims for insolvent trading might generally be thought to carry no risk…
BRI Ferrier’s Peter Krejci. A judge hearing a motion days out from the hearing of a bid for orders that disputed assets belong to a company in liquidation and not its underlying trust said yesterday that the case involves features he’s not encountered in 40 years of practising law. “You were attempting to elicit the truth, and legal proceedings sometimes stand in the way of…
Mackay Goodwin’s Mitchell Ball. You’d think a liquidator who’s scraped together enough moola to declare a surplus might earn some plaudits from the intended recipients. Many if not most liquidations after all generate nothing more than zero for creditors and hours of unremunerated work for appointees, so any kind of recovery is grounds for relief if not celebration. Expressions of gratitude from certain stakeholders in…
Darryl Kirk of Cor Cordis Brisbane. Well it turns out that when objectors to a liquidator’s remuneration application becomes in the court’s eyes adversaries, they can be liable for the liquidator’s costs of responding. The decision in question can be found at: Manicaros v Commercial Images (Aust) Pty Ltd [2022] QSC 83 which tells of the stiff resistance Cor Cordis partner Darryl Kirk encountered in…
PKF’s Petr Vrsecky. PKF partner Glenn Franklin. There was much hyperventilating last week after delivery of judgment in the matter of Intellicomms Pty Ltd (in liq) [2022] VSC 228 which record the first application of new laws aimed at combatting illegal phoenix activity. While it’s early days and the judgment could be overturned on appeal, few of the breathless commentators who explored this inaugural application…
Hall Chadwick’s Richard Albarran. Hall Chadwick’s Richard Lawrence. “Nice try but no cigar” might have been the words chief judge in equity David Hammerschlag muttered as he put the finishing touches to his ruling on the application by three Hall Chadwick partners for an order that they were entitled to an equitable lien over funds that might normally have been excepted to be the exclusive…