It seems the settlement that Octaviar’s liquidators extracted from KPMG in 2016 – with the help of a litigation funder – hasn’t quelled this tortured liquidation’s capacity to infect parties involved with discontent, rancour and litigious intent whilst simultaneously delivering millions in fees to the appointees and their advisers. KPMG settled a class action with unit holders in Octaviar’s Premium Income Fund (PIM) in 2015 and the…
The demolition of the liquidator’s exit plan could not have been more sweeping or complete. In 500 plus paragraphs delivered on Monday, Justice Greg Parker of the Supreme Court of South Australia dismissed every argument of Adelaide liquidator Nick Orfanos in a battle commenced a decade ago. Orfanos, accountant Michael Michaels and Willem (Bill) Ouwens, who as well as being an accountant is the Honorary Consul for the…
When you use your casting vote to defy the wants of the largest creditor and that creditor is the Deputy Commissioner of Taxation (DCoT), expect blowback. In the case of Veritas Advisory principal David Iannuzzi, the blowback manifested in him being ousted from an appointment yesterday. According to orders made in the Federal Court Iannuzzi has resigned, by consent and without admission, as court-appointed liquidator of North…
The barrister defending controversial ex-liquidator Andrew Wily against ASIC’s call for a judicial inquiry didn’t hold back yesterday. “There’s an element of spite about this,” barrister Ian Jackman SC told presiding Judge Paul Brereton as he sought to undermine ASIC’s case. “They want public censure,” he said. Jackman’s allegation of a spite motivation was part of a bid to demonstrate why the regulator’s application for a…
When the planets align, the wind blows fair and the detail is both accurate and abundant, the dispensers of justice are happy to approve liquidator remuneration claims on the basis of hourly rates without recourse to the inherently fee-reductive principles of proportionality. In the latest instalment in the growing genre of judgments spawned by Sakr Nominees Pty Limited [2017] NSWSC 668 Ferrier Hodgson partner George Georges has…
There’s nothing like a howler in official government documentation – in this instance from the NSW Office of State Revenue – to disrupt the straightforward process of asset disposal, as Deloitte’s Neil Cussen learned in the curious case of Zerren Pty Ltd. Cussen was appointed liquidator of Zerren in June 2014 following an application by the Chief Commissioner of State Revenue to wind up the…
Worrells pair Nathan Deppeler and Nick Cooper have at last put their brief stint as unwittingly unregistered liquidators behind them and Federal Court Judge David O’Callaghan has disclosed in his recently published reasons the difficulties in hearing an application from the pair when they were technically unregistered. As Justice O’Callaghan pointed out in his opening, “Their registrations as liquidators expired earlier this year because, through inadvertence,…
Judging by the most recent accounts and statement of Queensland Nickel’s special purpose liquidators (SPLs), Henry Carr will authorise hefty expenditures if he thinks the odds favour a result. Between December 2016 and March 2017 the Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG) Scheme recovery czar okayed the transfer of about $2.53 million from the coffers of the Federal Department of Employment’s (DoE) to PPB Advisory’s Steve Parbery and Michael Owen who were appointed as…
Nursing a broken hand under a black wool sock, liquidator Graham Ward endured more than an hour of cross-examination last Friday, courtesy of a company director seeking to claw back a chunk of the $165,000 in remuneration, expenses and disbursements that Ward and his Mackay Goodwin partner Domenic Calabretta have charged as administrators and liquidators of Securimax Pty Ltd. “There has been a very substantial transfer of…
Well former Vincents partner Peter Dinoris has had no luck in the Court of Appeal, neither has fellow liquidator David Clout and it has also emerged that in earlier proceedings, pre-insolvency adviser Peter John Levis was branded a rogue by Clout’s counsel, Mark Martin QC as well as being accused of lying. The claims are contained in Asden Developments Pty Ltd (in liq) v Dinoris [2017] FCAFC 117, published yesterday by the…