Trustees

Bankrupt ex-liquidator wants trustees neutered

dVT Group co-founder Riad Tayeh iNO Opinion You can imagine it must have been difficult for ex-liquidator Riad Tayeh to resist contributing a few cents worth of hard won wisdom when the Federal Government invited individuals and organisations to suggest improvements to the bankruptcy regime. The doors were flung open for submissions in January 2021, which was only a month before a judge of the…


Trustee’s bid for eleventh hour amendment refused

RSM partner Frank Lo Pilato. It doesn’t necessarily matter if your counsel has identified a new cause of action by which substantial sums might be recovered. If the trial dates are set, the respondents are prejudiced, the judge has a side hustle and you’re held to a higher standard than the average punter then you’ve got buckleys. That at least is how it turned out…


EY auditors off the hook as LM receiver settles

LMFMIF receiver David Whyte. Almost a decade after he was appointed to oversee the winding up of the LM First Mortgage Income Fund (LMFMIF), former BDO partner David Whyte has all but brought this salutary tale of greed and leverage to a conclusion after a court approved the entry by Whyte into a settlement with Ernst & Young. The terms of the settlement – the…


Trustee replaced as creditors war

WLP Restructuring CEO Scott Pascoe. BPS Recovery’s Dave Sampson. When bankrupts are elderly and rely on their accountant son to respond to inquiries from their trustee, there’s always the chance for things to go awry. When that son has previously been found by a judge of the Supreme court of Victoria to have falsified bank statements; deliberately flouted court orders and deliberately given false evidence…


Liquidator bankrupted over $5.4 million debt

dVT Group co-founder Riad Tayeh PCI Partners Stephen Michell. dVT Group co-founder Riad Tayeh was yesterday bankrupted by order of the Federal Circuit and Family Court over a $5.4 million debt owed to the creditors of Timbercorp Finance. The 58 year old liquidator from Sydney’s west has spent more than a decade fighting the claim, brought by Timbercorp’s liquidators Craig Shepard and Mark Korda of…


Bankruptcy trustee sued for alleged “deceit”

Jones Partners’ Michael Jones. A prominent Sydney trustee is defending an application for a conduct inquiry brought by a bankrupt who claims the trustee concealed from creditors his knowledge of more than $500,000 in a Westpac Bank account. The application – brought in the Federal Court by ex-Payless Entertainment CEO Mark Andrew Hurdis of Neutral Bay – alleges deceit and misconduct by the trustee in…


AFSA stuff up forces trustees to court

BPS Recovery’s Dave Sampson. KPMG’s Max Donnelly. Bungling by the Australian Financial Security Authority (AFSA) has forced two bankruptcy trustees to court in a bid to restore estates to their rightful appointees. Later today the Federal Court will hear an application by KPMG bankruptcy veteran Max Donnelly for declarations that he is the trustee in bankruptcy of the estate of Jason Maurie Nowytarger but not…


Two Bobs and Trustees unite on trust assets

McGrathNicol’s Rob Kirman. McGrathNicol’s Rob Brauer. Questions of priority of entitlement to trust assets continue to vex even the most unflappable of insolvency practitioners and as a recent court judgment shows, even judicial eminences are wary of conclusive excess. In the matter of Francis (Trustee), in the matter of Fotios (Bankrupt) v Helios Corporation Pty Ltd [2022] FCA 199 Federal Court judge Craig Colvin explains…


Less than one in 10 liquidators female

OPINION Less than 10 per cent of registered liquidators (RegLiqs) are female according to the latest ASIC data, suggesting initiatives aimed at increasing the proportion of female insolvency practitioners seeking and attaining registration are either inefficient or misguided. The Regulator’s latest Insolvency Statistics series, published in January 2022, shows there were 589 male RegLiqs domiciled in Australia and 57 female RegLiqs in the year 2020…


Trustee facing hefty costs order after appeal

CRS Warner principal Anthony Warner Sydney trustee Anthony Warner must be sitting on an estate flush with funds or is backed by a reliably liquid indemnifier after an appeals court deprived him of a nugget of residential gold and ordered him to pay the appellant’s costs of both the primary and appeal proceedings. iNO’s mail is that combined expenses could exceed $600,000. If Warner locked…