In the public interest SiN has resolved to update Supreme Court of NSW judge Paul Brereton about where the corporate regulator hatches its plots from these days because it transpires that the mother of all Corps List curmudgeons isn’t certain that ASIC has moved from 1 Martin Place. The judge’s recollection of the days when ASIC’s modestly remunerated minions enjoyed awkward silences with Macquarie Bank‘s…
In correspondence obtained by SiN, Ten Network Holdings’ administrator Mark Korda expressed his view that the ARITA Code of Professional Practice (COPP) required an upgrade if it was to adequately accommodate the realities of modern restructuring, particularly the realities represented by his firm’s work for Ten’s stakeholders in the months prior to its appointment as voluntary administrators (VAs) of the Ten Group. “KordaMentha recognises the important…
Ferrier Hodgson’s Peter Gothard has been appointed special purpose administrator (SPA) of Ten Network Holdings but in insolvency’s incestuous world of mutual referral, can any of the parties claim to be above the apprehension of bias? Gothard was appointed SPA yesterday by order of Federal Court judge David O’Callaghan. Those orders came after weeks of industry rumbling about the contents of the Declaration of Independence, Relevant Relationships and Indemnities…
Who reads those ASIC Regulatory Guides about registration renewal anyhow, apart perhaps from ARITA’s technical gurus, sundry boffins of a regulatory bent and your yarn-starved correspondent? Certainly not every single registered liquidator and among them definitely not Worrells’ Nick Cooper and Nathan Deppeler, who on the last day of the financial year received a phone call from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) advising that…
A spat over an appointment has been laid bare in convenient detail after the Deputy Commissioner of Taxation (DCoT) applied to the Federal Court to have ex-Vincents partner Peter Dinoris appointed liquidator of W.D. Hall Pty Ltd in place of incumbent voluntary administrator (VA), Paul Nogueira of Worrells. Freshly minted Federal Court judge Roger Derrington explained in Deputy Commissioner of Taxation, in the matter of W.D. Hall Pty Ltd v…
With compliance assuming an elephantine prominence in the day-to-day existence of the insolvency practitioner, it’s no surprise that the smaller, less-resourced operators have found it difficult to cope without updated precedents. The number of hours in a day is after all, frustratingly inelastic. Those frustrations have been intensified by the perception – commonly expressed to SiN by the more diminutive practices – that the Australian…
Searches of insolvent companies referred to in Pitcher Partners‘ report on the A & S Services Australia Group (ASSAG) have identified at least one insolvency practice whose principals are now assisting regulators probing a multi-million dollar tax evasion scheme allegedly masterminded by former bankrupt Philip Whiteman. Pitcher’s partner and report author Andrew Yeo, who interviewed various individuals connected to ASSAG, said in the report that ASSAG group…
With final submissions to the Department of Employment’s Reforms to address corporate misuse of the Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG) Scheme discussion paper due today, SiN thought it appropriate to revisit the tooth and nail struggle in which Sydney liquidator Jamieson Louttit has been engaged since receiving a $500,000 claim from the Department’s FEG Recovery Unit. The FEG recovery team are of the view that appointees are…
The Deputy Commissioner of Taxation (DCoT) has moved swiftly to take control of multiple insolvent entities connected to the alleged $130 million Plutus Payroll fraud and Deloitte partners Eddie Senatore, Tim Norman and Sal Algeri have scooped up what’s likely to be some very securely funded roles as provisional liquidators. On June 6 in the NSW Supreme Court DCoT intervened in a number of winding up…
In the same month that the Federal Government released a consultation paper seeking input on ways to reduce FEG fraud, a jury in the Victorian County Court has found a suspended liquidator not guilty on 15 charges of attempting to con payments out of the scheme using false employee records. The trial of Victorian Andrew Leonard Dunner, who in 2013 had his liquidator’s registration suspended…