Ex-liquidator David Iannuzzi. It makes sense to know who your friends are, not least because then you’ll then know that those of them closest must be the enemies. But for one Sydney liquidator, not knowing what his colleague was capable of has come back to bite, hard. Last month the Commonwealth of Australia via the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) filed a Statement…
Chris Baskerville of Jirsch Sutherland. Bailments. Security interests. Deeds of settlement and insolvency. It’s a formula liquidator Chris Baskerville has found can leave a bitter aftertaste. So good luck to those currently coming before Labor senator Deb O’Neill and others of her species as they hear submissions as part of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services review of Corporate Insolvency in Australia….
Mackay Goodwin’s Mitchell Ball. Mitchell Ball has chosen to abandon a final remuneration claim in the winding up of Speedy Ventilation Pty Ltd (Speedy) after a contributory asked the court to scrutinise the Mackay Goodwin director’s fees going back as far as 2016. “Mr Ball’s application for additional remuneration had the difficulty that, on any view, the remuneration claimed was large by reference to the…
McGrathNicol’s Anthony Connelly. McGrathNicol’s Jamie Harris. It’s generally agreed among the registered liquidator population that there are too few proceedings commenced against pre-insolvency advisors. The primary reasons are of course practical. It’s costly to prosecute claims of creditor defeating dispositions and if the advisors have done their job the liquidators won’t have any assets they can tap to pay lawyers. Without external funding whatever sharp…
Hall Chadwick partner John Vouris. Hall Chadwick partner Kathleen Vouris. The ephemeral nature of a corporate trustee’s right of indemnity continues to bedevil those charged with the winding up of a trustee company’s affairs. Trust deeds allow for the appointment of new trustees whenever an incumbent is insolvent or anticipated to shortly become so. Those wielding the power to appoint a replacement rarely decline to…
BRI Ferrier’s David Coyne. Former Barokes liquidator James Koutsoukos. A judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria has cracked a can of hurt after approving an application by a creditor to bring proceedings in the name of the company against the company’s liquidators. Whilst ruling that the creditor must agree to indemnify the company in liquidation again any adverse costs, Justice Richard Attiwill found that…
Wexted Advisors partner Andrew McCabe. Wexted Advisors founder and principal Joe Hayes. Lavishing creditors with a fat dividend on the eve of the festive season is no doubt an aspiration close to the heart of every insolvency practitioner, so one can imagine the distinctly unChristmas-like sentiments that must have echoed through the Pitt Street offices of Wexted Advisors early Monday morning. Unwelcome correspondence had arrived…
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…
CRS Warner principal Anthony Warner Insolvency Experts’ principal Steve Kugel. The bitter struggle over a failed partnership that’s pitted two liquidators against each other for seven years is about to go to trial. But based on comments yesterday to the respective antagonists’ lawyers, the judge who’s hearing the matter is thinking beyond case management and conclaves. “There will have to be something done in respect…
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…