Strathfield in administration - again

Strathfield Group
chairman Vaz Hovanessian.
Photo: SiN Images.

AFTER two weeks of desperate negotiations, Strathfield Group chairman Vaz Hovanessian has appointed Andrew Wily and Paul Fury from Armstrong Wily as external administrators to the crippled telco. Creditors will see a reconstruction proposal next month.

Hovanessian told SiN yesterday he’d spent much of the past fortnight persuading Optus, the company’s main supplier, to continue trading with the beleaguered group.

“If we go into liquidation Optus is going to pull the plug and the only asset we have is the Optus contract,” Hovanessian said.

“The only way is to stay in business, carry on to preserve the contract and you can see why there was frantic negotiations with Optus,” he said, adding the telco was still paying commissions to Strathfield as per the contract.

Paola Toppi delays bankruptcy notice

THE Toppi family has built an enviable reputation for food, service and marketing savvy on the back of its Clarence Street eatery Machiavelli.

A great many of SiN’s readers have availed themselves of its excellent dishes including the deep fried prawn cutlets.

Perhaps then power-lunch- hubris is what’s led Paola Toppi, daughter of the restaurant’s white smock-wearing institution Giovanna Toppi, into the bankruptcy courts?

Paola recently managed to obtain an extension to a deadline to comply with a bankruptcy notice served on her on September 19 by Cobbity Lodge Stud & Stables Pty Ltd.

It wasn’t much of an extension and SiN expects there will be more to report shortly. Maybe Paola should have stuck to the antipasto misto.

Contact SiN

Terrorism expertise no protection against debt threats

ACCORDING to her LinkedIn profile, Nessa Doyle is a senior account manager at Westpac specialising in anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing.

That expertise has not however saved the Bondi resident from threats to her personal solvency.

That's why she approached O'Brien Palmer's Chris Palmer about a Personal Insolvency Agreement (PIA).

O'Brien told SiN that he didn't anticipate any serious opposition to Doyle's PIA. Thankfully, Doyle's work at Westpac can continue unencumbered.

Contact SiN

Byrnes still augmenting Sydney's streets

THE corner of Castlereagh and Bathurst Streets is a long way from the DoCS office at Wagga Wagga. 

Nevertheless SiN does not believe that former "insolvency expert" Jim Byrnes had detoured on his way to his new job as a public servant in the state's south west to scoff a quick Subway sub when he was spotted around nine o'clock this morning.

The notorious figure was observed near the entrance to the Subway outlet, addressing an unidentified man in an animated manner. 

SiN turned away for no more than 20 seconds but in that time James, who moves quickly for a big man, had vanished as if he’d never been there at all.

Contact SiN

Lordy's late but Kevin's worried

Promoter Kevin Jacobsen
outside Darlinghurst Court.
Photo SiN Images.

A liquidator interrogating a receiver at a public examination? Sounds like SiN's jurisdiction.

But first the examinee has to appear and it was half an hour past the scheduled time before deregistered liquidator, receiver and former PKF partner John Lord and his lawyer showed at Darlinghurst Court number four.

The Registrar seemed to find the reason offered for the delay understandable. 

PPB gets the Hammerschlag hint

SUPREME Court justice David Hammerschlag could not have been any gentler or more persuasive in his insistence that PPB, the liquidator of the former ABC Learning Centres (Now ZYX Learning Centres in Liquidation) get a wriggle on in its defense of a $70 million claim being mounted by a Morgan Stanley private equity-type entity, domeciled in the Cayman Islands.

Unclean hands and the limitations of brine.

A not-so-recent image
of Roya Sheikholeslami.
Picture: University of
British Columbia 

SiN has always suspected that ripping salt out of water is not a high margin enterprise.

Why spend taxpayer's hard earned zapping the salty stuff to produce no-sodium H20? 

Not that the process of desalination was the reason behind the bankrupting of Roya Sheikholeslami, a highly credentialed, Iranian born Canadian chemical engineering scientist currently wowing them in Scotland.

After moving from Sydney to Edinburgh in the late 1990s, Roya's affairs were put in the hands of bankruptcy trustee Ray Tolcher.