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Social/Professional 23 December 2022

Credit conditions could impel appointments in 2023

CreditorWatch CEO Patrick Coghlan. The big revert. The great tsunami. The cataclysmic cascade as the wall of government intervention damning insolvency’s normal rate of appointments was finally breached. It didn’t happen. Despite moratoriums on insolvent trading being lifted and restrictions on statutory demands being relaxed directors defied exhortations to come out from underneath the doona. Insulated from consequence they dozed through the pandemic and in…

ATO, Creditors, Directors, DIRRIs, indemnity, Receivers, Referrers, Social/Professional, VA's & DoCA's 21 December 2022

Jirsch punted as Westpac declares preference

Chris Baskerville of Jirsch Sutherland. Insolvency practitioners need to be a thick-skinned and philosophical lot. Resentful creditors, regulators inclined to scape goat and duplicitous directors make for a generally adversarial stakeholder group that’s all too eager to pillory appointees at the merest whiff of an oversight. It’s no profession for those who need to be loved and when a practitioner cops a kicking they need…

Deals & Departures, Social/Professional 16 December 2022

COVID entrepreneurialism behind insolvency start up

Jarrod Sierocki. Liquidator turned investigator Brendan Nixon. When you attribute some of the blame for the failure of your insolvency firm to measures imposed to curtail COVID’s spread, it shows a certain chutzpah to then utilise a key pandemic abatement feature in spruiking your new shop. So when an anonymous tipster advised iNO that Queensland-based insolvency operator Jarrod Sierocki had started a new outfit, imagine…

Conflict, Directors, DIRRIs, Liquidations, Liquidators, Social/Professional, VA's & DoCA's 25 November 2022

Liquidator forced to appoint bank’s VAs before ousting

KordaMentha partner Kate Conneely. KordaMentha partner Rahul Goyal. Those few independent insolvency firms that operate at the top end of the market – McGrathNicol and KordaMentha specifically – can have a hard time clearing the conflict bar. Secureds are forever knocking on their doors, begging to avail themselves of their forensic expertise and often they’ll come knocking again once the investigating accountant (IA) reports have…

Creditors, Directors, Liquidations, Liquidators, Litigation, Receivers, Social/Professional, VA's & DoCA's 23 November 2022

Deed administrators block pub group dividend

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…

Bankruptcy, Conflict, Judgment, Lawyers, Social/Professional, Trustees 23 November 2022

Plaintiff trustees preferred if no difference discerned

PwC’s Andrew Scott. When rival parties propose their own trustees to sell property and there’s not even daylight between the contenders, how’s a judge to decide? The answer lies within Yat Kit Jong and Man Chun So – the Trustees of the Property of Ho Wah Au, a Bankrupt v Chow [2022] NSWSC 1595 which reveals that all things being equal, the plaintiff’s nominee generally…

ATO, Lawyers, Liquidators, Litigation, Social/Professional 18 November 2022

Partnership stoush for trial but who’ll do the tax?

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…

Fees, Judgment, Lawyers, Liquidations, Liquidators, Receivers, Social/Professional, VA's & DoCA's 16 November 2022

An application approved, an application refused

Hall Chadwick partner Sule Arnautovic. Dermott McVeigh of Avior Consulting. Back to the drawing board was the message for Avior Consulting’s Dermott McVeigh after a judge refused the Perth-based practitioner’s application for approval of a lift in receivership fees. For Hall Chadwick’s Sule Arnautovic however, who was also in the Corporations List queue on Monday applying for approval of remuneration earned whilst an administrator and…

ASIC, Conflict, Liquidators, Regulation/Legislation, Social/Professional, SPL 4 November 2022

Stimpson stymied by SV Partners director’s partner

SV Partners’ David Stimpson. SV Partners Matthew Bookless. Liquidator David Stimpson is having to deal with some unwelcome complexities intruding into his management of the Youpla indigenous funeral fund debacle thanks to those pesky rules around independence and apprehensions of a lack thereof. Near as we can tell, the domino that precipitated the recently filed application by ASIC and the Department of Fair Trading (DFT)…

ASIC, ATO, Creditors, Fees, Liquidators, Social/Professional 4 November 2022

ATO among creditors objecting to ex-liquidators’ fees

Hall Chadwick’s Richard Lawrence. Hall Chadwick’s Richard Albarran. As iNO reported back in July, Hall Chadwick partners Richard Albarran and Richard Lawrence are determined to be paid for the work they did on the tempestuous Tauro Capital administration before creditors replaced them in October 2020. At the time iNO speculated that some creditors at least might be just as determined to deny them. We can…