Lehman creditors encouraged to share the pain

Lehman Borthers Australia
liquidator Marcus Ayres.
Photo courtesy PPB Advisory

YOU know you’re handling a complex liquidation when the best option for satisfying creditors’ claims is one that delivers equality of unhappiness for all.

Lehman Brothers Australia (LBA) is such a liquidation. Since their appointment in 2009 PPB Advisory’s Marcus Ayres and Steve Parbery have dealt with complex financial instruments backed by tainted mortgage pools; multi-jurisdictional legal wrangles; hardball insurance syndicates and class actions mounted by plaintiffs scarred when the aforementioned derivatives exploded.

On Wednesday the liquidators faced LBA creditors assembled at the Bligh Street offices of Clayton Utz to discuss their latest report.

Perfectly Positioned - but not for Colefax's Haberfield retail play

Whatever 78 Ramsay Street is perfect for, it was not perfect for
the Colefax Lounge & Cafe.
Photo: SiN Images

THE temporary refurbishment of the Colefax Lounge & Cafe looks to have become a permanent abandonment.

Signage erected over the September 15-16 weekend suggests the landlord of 78 Ramsay Street, Haberfield doesn't expect the former tenants to return.

The new signage replaces notices taped to the windows in the immediate aftermath of the outlet's closure late last month  which advised patrons that the Colefax cafe would be shut temporarily.

Those notices were removed abruptly last week and it seems Haberfield has lost a popular chocolatier and cafe operator.

Colefax's curious Haberfield refurb

Did the advertised refurbishment become a removal?
Photo: SiN Images 

The Colefax Lounge & Cafe on Ramsay Road Haberfield is yet to reopen after initially advising patrons it was undergoing a temporary refurbishment.

The premises at 78 Ramsay Road shut around the beginning of September.

As the accompanying images show, paper-sheeting screening the interior has fallen away in recent days, allowing curious passersby to see that the aforementioned refurb must involve at least temporary removal of all furniture, shop counters or in fact almost any object that could be classified as “removable”.

Max acts for tax man in battle over settlement funds

A $1.95 million settlement between the former occupants
of this Manly property is in Max Donnelly's sights.
Photo: SiN Images  

FOR what is probably not the first time in his career, Max Donnelly has been ordered to produce his particulars.

Particulars about what bankrupt tax lawyer David Neill Bonnell knew.

Particulars about when Bonnell knew what he's alleged to have known.

And particulars about how Donnelly knows that when Bonnell transferred $5 million from his non-compliant super fund to Windoval, a company he controlled, it was done intentionally to foil the taxman.

The Windoval payment was made on July 1, 1999. Accrued interest might turn out to be quite a sum.