Fees continue to flow for Octaviar's appointees and advisors

Legal fees and costs orders are revealed
in Octaviar's latest accounts

THE latest accounts for Octaviar Administration (OA) show that Bill Fletcher and Kate Barnett earned almost $370,000.00 in fees in the past six months, taking total remuneration since they were appointed to $23.125 million.

The Bentleys' pair were installed as liquidators of OA and Octaviar Limited (OL) in September 2009 after the Public Trustee of Queensland, acting on behalf of creditors, removed Deloitte's John Greig and Nicholas Harwood.

By December 2012 Fletcher and Barnett had generated $15.7 million in fees on the OA side. Since then they've charged an additional $7.425 million for doling out dividends and, until this year, flinging cash from OA's bulging treasury accounts at a range of litigious stratagems.

However with the liquidation of OA and OL forecast to end in June 2016 it appears that they've drawn a line under the legal actions, including their costly pursuit of US finance house Fortress Credit Corporation. 

In May this year - at around the time that OL's special purpose liquidator reached a $12.35 million settlement with Fortress - Fletcher and Barnett settled their disputes. Though the precise terms have yet to be prised out, SiN understands OA's settlement required payment of Fortress's legal costs. In this respect a reference in the accounts to $2.35 million paid to the trust account of Fortress's solicitors, Baker & McKenzie, may be instructive.