Trustees

The vicissitudes of van der Velde priced at $300,000

SV Partners managing director Terry van der Velde. SV Partners boss Terry van der Velde would’ve known it was coming but it seems a costs order of $298,898.49 is a sum even a successful mid-tier insolvency chieftain can’t effortlessly cajole from one’s indemnity insurer. van der Velde’s vicissitudes were made manifest on August 12 by Federal Court Registrar Tom Morgan, who determined that a previous…


trustee

Bankruptcy trustee axed by AFSA

Louise Thomson – Bankruptcy trustee’s registration cancelled. The registration of NSW-based bankruptcy trustee Louise Thomson has been cancelled on the recommendation of a committee convened to investigate allegations of conflict of interest. In a statement issued yesterday AFSA said that in 2019 its staff had “investigated instances of misconduct that called into question Thomson’s independence, judgement and general suitability to remain registered as a trustee.”…


SV Partners boss to pay developer’s costs

SV Partners managing director Terry van der Velde. Where would the legal profession be without property development and the limitless labyrinth of opportunity for dispute that bricks and mortar afford? That’s the question that comes to mind on reading the judgement of Federal Court judge Kathleen Farrell in Campbell v van der Velde as trustee of the bankrupt estate of Marilyn Anne Rowan, in the matter…


Pitchers duo dodge inspector general bullet

Pitcher Partners’ Andrew Yeo. Pitcher Partners’ Gess Rambaldi. Water rights, unending ATO audits and internet scams – Pitchers Partners duo Andrew Yeo and Gess Rambaldi have had quite a time of it in respect of the bankruptcy of Victorian dairy farmer Peter Alan Sandles, and that’s without being heavied by the Inspector General in Bankruptcy. The intriguing tale comes to us via Federal Circuit Court…


Trustee referred to Schedule 2 Committee – again

Louise Thomson: first trustee to be referred to disciplinary committee twice. Image Veritas Advisory. With apologies to Oscar Wilde, iNO was recently moved to observe that while being referred to a disciplinary committee once might be considered a misfortune, twice looks like carelessness.  Certainly it will be unfortunate if it transpires that misfortune is behind AFSA’s most recent referral of Louise Thomson to a committee…


Delay sees trustee ordered to repay $180k

Trustee Tim Holden. Victorian-based bankruptcy trustee Tim Holden has had some salt rubbed into wounds inflicted earlier this year but also dodged a bullet, with a judge rejecting his opposition to the making of declarations in respect of judgments handed down earlier this year but declining to refer him for investigation to the Inspector-General in Bankruptcy. The insertion of the salt came via Pekar v…


Trustee recommends section 77AA complacency buster

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…


Bankrupt IP’s affairs yield issues of interest

Bankrupt IP Sam Henderson. It probably goes without saying that when a once successful insolvency practitioner is bankrupted and companies he’s been associated with collapse, then the subsequent insolvency appointees might uncover issues of interest. In the case of the recently bankrupted Sam Henderson – who sources insist held a partner-equating status when he was at Jirsch Sutherland – liquidators John McInerney and Phil Campbell-Wilson…


Colourful creditors claim big in Henderson bankruptcy

Bankrupt and owing $26 million Sam Henderson. Insolvency practitioners presumably apply an exacting rigour to the management of their own financial affairs so your correspondent’s eyebrows headed for the stratosphere last week when we learned that bankrupt insolvency practitioner Sam Henderson apparently owes his creditors almost $26 million. The outlandish figure – the $26 mil, not Henderson – was contained in the first report to…


Dixon ousted from Lonestar after AFSA intervention

Hamilton Murphy’s Stephen Dixon. The old independence bugbear never lets up it seems with AFSA recently gnawing on an apparently conflicted limb attached to registered trustee Stephen Dixon. iNO understands it was the view of the personal insolvency regulator that the Hamilton Murphy partner should not have taken an appointment as trustee of the bankrupt estate of Graeme Charles Diamond, 63 of Guanaba in Queensland,…