Jirsch Sutherland’s Malcolm Howell. Jirsch Sutherland’s Malcolm Howell must be rueing the relaxed attitude that permeates Australia’s holiday season interlude, given if it were not for an overlooked envelope he might still be administrator of ACN 168 479 614 Pty Ltd, formerly known as Steller Developments Pty Ltd. As it is, the Melbourne-based partner has consented to orders made in the NSW Supreme Court last…
HLB Mann Judd’s Todd Gammel A judge’s comments have sounded yet another warning to lawyers about over egging the pudding, in this case in terms of advising on subpoena compliance. In the matter of Lainson Holdings Pty Limited [2019] NSWSC 1446 NSW Supreme court judge Kelly Rees was determining an application Lainson Holdings‘ receivers and managers had made for a gross sum costs order. “His…
Sean Wengel of William Buck NSW. When a court orders receivers’ fees be capped at $30,000 and they subsequently bill for $200,000, you know something somewhere has gone way way wrong. In the matter of Shanmugathaas & Anor v Paramanirupan & Ors [2019] NSWSC 1219 we may be seeing another example of how the new powers bestowed upon creditors by ILRA 2016 will sometimes generate…
Pitcher Partners’ Bryan Hughes. Auxilium Partners’ Bob Jacobs. Over in West Australia there’s been an interesting development in the stoush between the current and former receivers of Pluton Resources over the status of, and entitlement to, so-called residual funds. In Robert Allan Jacobs as Receiver and Manager of Pluton Resources Ltd (Receiver and Manager Appointed) (In Liq) -v- Hughes [2018] WASC 414 (9 August 2019)…
Pilot Partners’ Ann Fordyce. Pilot Partners’ Nigel Markey. Almost 20 years have passed since the failure of accountancy aggregator Harts Australasia but shock waves from Steven Hart’s hubristic venture onto the ASX persist and most recently it’s Pilot Partners’ Nigel Markey and Anne Fordyce inadvertently swept up with a court ruling their appointment as receivers of a Hart-related entity was invalid. The pair were appointed…
Hall Chadwick’s Blair Pleash. Hall Chadwick’s Richard Albarran. As can be seen from the latest judgment in the Equititrust saga, it can be tough to make the case that litigation funding benefits anyone other than the lawyers, the insolvency practitioners and the funder when creditors collect zeros. That of course is not to suggest litigation funding has no place. Far from it. In unfunded insolvencies…
BPS Recovery partner David Sampson. Image courtesy BPS Recovery. BPS Recovery partner David Sampson has at last got the go ahead to pay himself some remuneration for work done as court-appointed receiver of a suite of barrister’s chambers. Sampson has had to go through a lot to get to this point, including fending off multiple applications by the chamber’s occupant Derek Minus, all of which…
Liquidator David Iannuzzi. I infer, therefore I am. Such were the inanities wont to shuffle behind INO’s eyeballs during pauses in the Supreme Court’s Corporations List on Monday morning. Fortunately for you, good readers and bad, such philosophical meanderings are infrequent and the most recent evaporated instantly upon the detection of an irregularity. In these opportunity-starved times, an insolvency practitioner seeking to be discharged from…
BDO’s David Whyte. BDO’s David Whyte has – in conjunction with other stakeholders in the LM Investment Group imbroglio – engineered a settlement that frees him up to pursue big four accounting firm EY over its role as auditor of the LM First Mortgage Income Fund (FMIF). In Bruce v LM Investment Management Limited (in liq) [2019] QSC 126 Queensland Supreme Court judge Debra Mullins…
Pitcher Partners WA chief Bryan Hughes. Pitcher Partners’ Bryan Hughes has fended off a bid in the West Australian Supreme Court to raise doubts about the adequacy of his investigations as liquidator of Apex Minerals and Apex Gold. Hughes was appointed voluntary administrator (VA) of Apex Minerals and its wholly owned subsidiary Apex Gold in June 2013. The same day Hughes was appointed – June…