In Fischer v Nemeske [2016] HCA 11, the High Court has ruled on a rather vague resolution by which a Trustee resolved to make distributions, never paid, to beneficiaries. The outcome of the case shows the importance of taking care with these resolutions. They may create debts that can be enforced later by the beneficiaries. […]
Mining joint venture agreements often give a joint venturer a menu of up to 3 enforcement options when a co-venturer defaults in making required cash contributions: enforce a cross charge, appointing a receiver or selling up the defaulter’s interest; a default purchase option, exercising a right to buy out the defaulter’s interest at (or just […]
Forge Group Power Pty Limited v General Electric International Inc [2016] NSWSC 52 The long-awaited Forge decision is out. Mining services company Forge went into voluntary administration 2 years ago, then into liquidation. Forge had leased turbines, said in press reports to be worth around $50 million, from GE. GE failed to make a PPS […]
This year should bring interesting developments in the law of criminal sentencing in Victoria. The story begins: baseline offences In November 2014, the baseline sentencing provisions in the Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic) came into operation. The provisions applies only to specified offences, called ‘baseline offences’. These included murder and child sexual abuse offences. For baseline […]
The aim of crowd sourced equity funding (CSEF) is to enable companies, particularly innovative start-ups, to raise comparatively small amounts of equity funding from a spread of investors, usually via an online platform, with less disclosure than would be required in a full prospectus. In a post in August this year, I noted that the […]
I have expanded my online digest of PPSA cases to include two recent decisions. Gelpack Enterprises Pty Ltd, Re [2015] NSWSC 1558 Gelpack is a case about authority needed to sign or agree to terms of a security agreement, and is also interesting because the court commented on the nature of the rights in collateral […]
In an exposure draft of the Treasury Legislation Amendment (Spring Repeal Day) Bill 2015, the Government has proposed amendments to the Corporations Act and to tax legislation, to abolish the concept of the Australian Company Number (ACN) for new companies. Companies to be formed with ABNs instead of ACNs Instead, every newly-formed company must have […]
An amendment to the PPSA, dealing with short term leases, will commence soon. Generally, leases of serial numbered goods (motor vehicles, aircraft, watercraft) will no longer require registration if the term is a year or less, replacing the former 90 day rule for these kinds of goods. But there are traps for the unwary, particularly […]
In an earlier post in February this year, I noted that the Government was moving towards the introduction of crowd sourced equity funding, or CSEF, in Australia, following the issue of a Treasury discussion paper in late 2014 that had described three possible approaches to this reform. CSEF means raising comparatively small amounts of equity […]
If you want a registration against you removed from the PPS register, and you give an amendment demand but the secured party will not remove it, you can apply to the Registrar (the ‘administrative process’) or a court (the ‘judicial process’) to have it removed. A recent decision by the AAT comments on the different […]