Case and statute law
Insolvent Trading and Minimal Returns to Creditors in Liquidations
This is a brief response to a well-researched and thoughtful article by Associate Professor Mark Wellard – Insolvent Trading: Director ...
The cross-border regulation of insolvency practitioners – insights from INSOL Tokyo
I was invited to present at the INSOL International Academic Colloquium on 12 September 2023 in Tokyo on the panel ...
Public interest supports time extension for insolvency recovery action
Litigation claims brought by insolvency practitioners (IPs) are not like the usual commercial claims on behalf of a commercial, or ...
Australian voluntary administrators appointed as New Zealand interim liquidators
In Insolvency licensing bodies confirmed for New Zealand’s new regulatory regime – Murrays Legal, of August 2020, I explained the ...
ASIC v Jones [GD Pork] – insolvency practitioner independence and pre-insolvency advice
A court decision concerning insolvency practitioner independence and pre-insolvency advice usefully raises issues recommended for law reform review by the ...
Penalising cartel conduct – BlueScope Steel: $57m penalty, net profit $2.8b
The Federal Court has fined BlueScope Steel $57 million for cartel conduct under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) ...
NZ Supreme Court confirms Mainzeal directors’ liabilities for over NZ$39 million
The Supreme Court of New Zealand has dismissed directors’ appeals from a finding that they must pay over NZ$6 million ...
15 years for tax fraud – immoral and illegal
Mr Adam Cranston has been sentenced to 15 years jail for his involvement in conspiracies to deprive the Commissioner of ...
ASIC v Bettles – case dismissed, with costs
ASIC has lost a major Federal Court proceeding brought against a senior and experienced liquidator, Jason Bettles, alleging that his ...
“Record penalties” imposed … against insolvent companies
While much is made of the “record penalties of $438m” penalties imposed on the Phoenix Institute and related companies for ...
Cancellation of a liquidator’s registration
While England is still deciding whether to change its system of insolvency practitioner regulation from one of co-regulation by professional ...
Insolvency practitioner independence – how commercial is the fair-minded observer?
A pending WA appeal decision may address the issue of the extent to which commercial considerations surrounding the appointment of ...
Now we have three Part 5.3B restructuring practitioners
One more person has been appointed as a restructuring practitioner to conduct administrations under Part 5.3B of the Corporations Act ...
Liquidator discipline outcome – reasons unknown
A discipline committee has cancelled the registration of a liquidator but declined to publish its reasons for doing so. ASIC ...
Bankrupt succeeds in gaining access to trustees’ notice to produce
A bankrupt has successfully obtained a copy of a s 77A notice to produce served by his trustees on the ...
Breach of an undertaking not to enter insolvency, an undertaking that was “not worth the paper it was written on”
In a penalty judgment against GetSwift, Justice Michael Lee had some comment to make about GetSwift’s entry into voluntary liquidation ...
DOCAs – should ‘not much of a return to creditors but better than the liquidation alternative’ be enough?
Issued June 2021, re-issued January 2023 The WA Supreme Court has dismissed a challenge to deeds of company arrangement (DOCAs) ...
Relationships of a liquidator and conflicts of interest
A general purpose liquidator has been found to have had a conflict of interest because a former legal adviser to ...
Penalties imposed on debt agreement administrator for false and misleading, threatening and coercive conduct against debtors
ASIC has succeeded in obtaining penalties against A & M group for false and misleading threatening and coercive conduct against ...
Abolition of the AAT, and its insolvency law matters
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal is to be abolished we are told and replaced by a new administrative law review body ...
Receiver’s demand for documents made on a bankrupt director
The New Zealand Court of Appeal has found that a director, despite being bankrupt, must hand over documents of the ...
NSW clubs and their insolvency appointments
The NSW Registered Clubs Act 1976 has a quaint provision – s 41 – providing that an insolvency appointee such ...
Ownership is sometimes but not always as it seems – presumptions for, presumptions against, and evidence
A ‘wife’ has succeeded before the High Court in preventing the ATO claiming what it argued was her husband’s interest ...
Lawyers’ “grossly inflated” costs estimates
A Judge has dismissed a respondent’s application for security for costs that contained estimates that were “grossly inflated, far beyond ...
