Resolve looking to disrupt and dominate

Resolve hopes to disrupt anad dominateResolve is looking to disrupt the traditional pathway by which IPs sell assets.
Resolve co-founders

Edward Scott (L) and Simon Plummer: co-founders at Resolve

A trio of entrepreneurs is preparing to shake up the established model of distressed asset sales by launching Resolve, an online platform designed to effect transactions between insolvency practitioners and distressed asset investors on a secure digital exchange.

The three Melbournians – Edward Scott, and brothers Simon and Andrew Plummer – see an opportunity to recreate the existing process by which practitioners with assets to sell attract interest from the appropriate investment sectors, a process that currently involves shopping opportunities to existing referral networks and advertising businesses and assets for sale in the financial press.

“It was innovation at the legislative level that helped drive this,” Scott said this week in Sydney during a road show he and Simon Plummer are undertaking to demonstrate the Resolve platform to key market participants.

Plummer said part of their mission is improving the social and economic outcomes of insolvency in Australia. “It’s a core problem in the industry that we’re trying to solve and we’re trying to empower practitioners to drive better returns for creditors,” he said.

The platform will generate revenue for its founders through a $1000 registration fee that will allow IPs to host information about a business on a secure platform.

The site features a series of drop down menus designed to drive stakeholders throughout an insolvency engagement to the one listing page. There’s a public files tab where appointees can host media releases, FAQs and circulars to employees and company overviews.

“For creditors there’s a terms and conditions page they can click through to get to the second 439A Report or digitally upload proofs of debt forms or appointments of proxies,” Plummer said.

Then comes the meat – the essential details around date and nature of appointment, any details around the appointee’s investigations, a summary of the business, what it is that’s actually for sale and a strategic overview of who might be interested in buying the business and whether the relevant industry sector is contracting or growing.

Finally there’s an Expressions of Interest tab enabling the IP to start funnelling potential investors down a path that the practitioners can control and use to engage with possible buyers using a data and functionality application. “We can integrate data rooms within 10 or 15 minutes,” Plummer said.

The pair said that the Resolve platform could also assist practitioners comply with the requirements of section 420A of the Corporations Act as it applies to achieving market price in the course of disposing of an asset.

“It’s been a bit of a perfect storm at the moment with this law reform, it’s just such a great opportunity for us as we’re trying to drive innovation within the industry,” Scott said.

We’ve had many conversations over the course of the last 12 months not just with insolvency practitioners who are excited about it but with investors who are desperate to find some transparent, distressed and insolvent deal flow.”

For more information see: Resolve

About the Author

Peter Gosnell
Insolvency News Online illuminates the practice of insolvency Australia-wide, highlighting the triumphs and travails of the nation’s registered practitioners and the accounting and legal professionals who work with them. INO is produced by Peter Gosnell, former business editor and senior business reporter at The Daily Telegraph newspaper. During a decade-long career, your correspondent reported on such notable corporate collapses as HIH, One.Tel, Westpoint and Fincorp as well as some of the nation's highest profile bankruptcies and the investigations and prosecutions arising from Australia's most notorious instances of white-collar crime.

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