Liquidators receiving letters from a lawyer asking for this or that is no rare thing, but when such a letter specifies information relating to companies to which the liquidator has never been appointed well, that ain’t so common.
What is common though is the try on, and the correspondence Glenn Livingstone and Scott Pascoe received on September 26 would seem to qualify as an exemplar of its kind.
This is because amongst the range of information sought was material relating to Griffin Coal Mining Company Pty Ltd (GCMC) and related entity Carpenter Mine Management Pty Ltd (CMM) (Griffin Group), two companies to which the WLP Restructuring partners had not been appointed when the letter arrived, though that changed on September 29 at a meeting convened for the purpose of ousting the incumbents.
The author of the letter was Allens partner Philip Blaxill, who has been in the thick of disputes involving Griffin Group and its major customer in West Australia, the Kansai Electric and Sumitomo Corporation-owned Bluewater Group.
For a period after the Griffin entities were placed in external administration certain shareholder creditors funded liquidators Jeremy Nipps and Tom Birch of Cor Cordis in a bid to have the Coal Supply Agreements (CSAs) between The Companies and the Bluewater Group – which are onerous for the Griffin entities – declared uncommercial.
Blaxill has been acting for Bluewaters and in the DIRRI Livingstone and Pascoe lodged this week they state: “On 26 September 2023, we received a letter from Philip Blaxill, Partner of Allens noting that Allens act for Bluewaters Power 1 Pty Limited and Bluewaters Power 2 Pty Limited and requesting we provide various documents and or information relating to the Companies.”
Now Blaxill is far too experienced not to know that an insolvency practitioner has no power to comply with a request for information about a company to which he or she has never been appointed.
Further, why would a lawyer think a pair of insolvency practitioners who are not appointees have information about The Companies? Would not that information be in the possession of the incumbents?
Like most lawyers trying it on, Phil left Allens’ communications and corporate affairs manager Kate Scanlon to answer the questions iNO put to him personally. She advised by email that the firm had no comment, not that Allens was being asked.
We still reckon asking was worth a try. It’s good enough for lawyers after all and, thanks to iNO’s sources, it turns it out that there’s more than one way to flense this feline.
Seems that the September 26 letter also sought information relating to how the appointment was referred to Livingstone and Pascoe.
The DIRRI reveals that the referral came via Perth-based Tottle Partners but not before Livingstone and Pascoe were softened up via enquiries from Quinn Emmanuel’s Elan Sasson and Robert True in late June and early July.
In the disputes engulfing the parties Tottle Partners has been acting for Lanco Resources Australia Pty Ltd (Lanco), a subsidiary of crippled Indian conglomerate Lanco Infratech, which purchased Griffin Coal’s mines in 2010 and is now controlled by Indian bank ICIC.
Lanco is a creditor and a shareholder of The Companies. As such it has a keen interest in proceedings commenced last month in the Federal Court of Australia by Blaxill against receivers of the Griffin Coal entities on behalf of his client.
Now it was receivers Sean Holmes, Matthew Donnelly and Grant Sparkes who were the primary burr in Nipps and Birch’s saddle when the latter were being pushed to find a way to disclaim the contentious Coal Supply Agreements.
And it was the Deloitte trio who in June delivered the ultimatum to the Cor Cordis pair, insisting that they convene a meeting to allow creditors to replace them, a meeting that took place on September 29, only three days after Livingstone and Pascoe received Blaxill’s letter.
Although the Minutes of last Friday’s meeting haven’t dropped, Birch confirmed yesterday that whilst their remuneration had been approved there remains a shortfall in respect of $550,000 in funding provided to them by Lanco for the purposes of pursuing the claims of uncommerciality.
Prior to their ousting iNO reported how Nipps and Birch had fallen into dispute with Lanco after the creditor rejected their strategy in respect of the CSA disclaimer issue and demanded what remained of the funds be repaid. Birch confirmed also that the dispute has not been resolved.
Meanwhile the Bluewaters proceedings had their first case management hearing in the Perth Registry yesterday. No doubt there’ll be more letters sent before this saga ends.
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