Deloitte’s Sal Algeri. It was lessors gone feral in correspondence between legal representatives of aircraft owners and Virgin’s voluntary administrators (VAs) last week as the owners of the (mostly) grounded fleet sought to extract agreements and undertakings in exchange for refraining from challenging the VA’s application to extend their exemption from personal liability for aircraft lease payments to May 26. The lessors are owed around…
KPMG’s Gayle Dickerson. KPMG’s Ryan Eagle Another day, another judgement detailing the havoc wreaked on the voluntary administrations process (VAs) by COVID-9. In Eagle, in the matter of Techfront Australia Pty Limited (administrators appointed) [2020] FCA 542 Justice Kathleen Farrell provided a conveniently succinct account of the obstacles the virus had placed in the path of KPMG partners Ryan Eagle and Gayle Dickerson, who were…
ARITA President Scott Atkins. AIIP President Stephen Hathway. ARITA president Scott Atkins wants businesses seeking safe harbour protection to be exempted from compliance with their tax and employee obligations as the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to decimate Australian SMEs. Atkins, who is Head of Risk Advisory at Norton Rose Fullbright, said to prevent mass insolvencies the federal government should freeze laws around insolvent trading and safe…
McGrathNicol Partner Kathy Sozou. Image McGrathNicol. Ankura senior managing director Quentin Olde. While the extent of the impact on business of the COVID-19 pandemic remains unknown, what is certain is that Australia’s nascent safe harbour regime and the capacities of our insolvency firms are set to be tested like never before. Restructuring practitioners contacted this week confirmed they were fielding more enquiries from company directors…
Registered trustees, debt agreement administrators & other insolvency practitioners – can you help with research on personal insolvency law? A Melbourne Law School PhD study is researching the options available for people who are over-indebted, including bankruptcy and debt agreements. Nicola Howell’s study is focusing on the impacts of the different options on debtors, including the extent to which debtors improve their financial situation and…
PKF’s Brad Tonks. Imagine, if you are so predisposed, a day when the ASIC database communicates with itself. Information uploaded dissolves instantly into a cyber solution. There it’s compared with every relevant byte of meaning already saturating ASIC’s deep reservoir of data. At quantum computing speeds, the digital litmus satisfies itself, classifying the intel as compliant with the myriad rules and regulations that have been…
Jones Partners’ Michael Jones. Last Friday a Coffs Harbour resident who had yet to file his statement of affairs despite being bankrupted two years earlier was surprised to find police and officers from AFSA knocking on his door around 7:00am. Once admitted the AFSA officers seized various items pursuant to the powers provided to the Official Receiver under section 77AA of the Bankruptcy Act. Also…
FEG Recovery Unit Director Henry Carr. The Commonwealth is coming and in hindsight the mass of request for information letters sent to registered liquidators (RegLiqs) recently by the FEG Recovery Unit should not surprise. Once FEG’s view on corporate trustees and circulating assets was vindicated by the High Court, as it was last June in: Carter Holt Harvey Woodproducts Australia Pty Ltd v The Commonwealth…
Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudswoman Kate Carnell.Image Supplied. The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (ASBFEO) will conduct an inquiry into the insolvency system with a view to determining if current practices “achieve the best possible outcome for small and family businesses in financial trouble.” Never mind that small business owners are the largest contributors to Australia’s multi-billion dollar unpaid tax bill,…
Worrells partner Simon Cathro. Brooke Bird’s Robyn Erskine. Apart from ASIC’s April 2019 Corporate Insolvency Update there’s been precious from the regulator in regards to the work of the Reviewing Liquidator’s (RevLiq) Panel, set up at the beginning of the year to give effect to the Insolvency Law Reform Act 2016 (ILRA 2016) reforms. iNO had hoped that would change this week after we sent…