Owners Corp managers opposing ex-VA’s fees

Whilst some face the possibility that the ATO might renege on an undertaking and pursue monies it previously deemed vests with a liquidator, others are instead vexed by competing claims from creditors and the appointees they replaced.

For Hogan Sprowles co-founder Christian Sprowles, that has meant he’s had to delay distributing some part of an approximately $285,000 cash surplus to creditors of Glenvine Pty Ltd.

The delay is due to a claim for remuneration by the company’s former administrator, which is being challenged by managers installed to wind up an insolvent owners corporation to which Glenvine is indebted.

That challenge emerged on Monday in the NSW Supreme Court after an application for approval of $124,000 in remuneration came before Corporations List judge Ashley Black.

The remuneration is being sought by Olvera Advisors’ Damien Hodgkinson, who was appointed administrator of Glenvine in April 2020 and ousted the following month after unsuccessfully applying to the courts to have Sprowles’ appointment as liquidator delayed until after Glenview’s second meeting, which had been scheduled for May 20, 2020.

A lot of time has passed since but several things are clear. Hodgkinson wants to be paid but hasn’t been prepared to ask creditors for approval and the owners corporation – under the control of BDO’s Andrew Sallway and Jeff Marsden since 2021 – isn’t in an approving mood.

Yesterday Sallway told iNO that he wants to see a remuneration report but hasn’t made up his mind as to whether or not he and Marsden, as the managers of the insolvent owners corporation, would oppose Hodgkin’s application.

He said that an offer Hodgkinson had made previously wasn’t satisfactory to certain owners corporation creditors who had an outstanding costs order against the Olvera boss.

On Monday the court heard that an objection to the remuneration application had been filed on January 19, 2023 and that the owners corporation was objecting to both the amount sought and the right of the ex-administrator to claim remuneration, though how those arguments will be developed was not discussed. No doubt the outstanding costs order will play a role.

Justice Black eventually granted the owners corporation the right to be joined as objector and set the matter down for hearing on July 5 and 6.