Creditor wants to replace Ebert liquidator
A large creditor of failed building company Ebert Construction is calling informal creditor meetings to give creditors a choice about whether they want a new liquidator.
Ebert collapsed into receivership in August owing more than $45 million, of which $33.8m is to unsecured creditors.
Tempest Litigation Funders, which bought bad debts from Ebert, plans to hold meetings in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, to ‘‘get other creditors into the room’’ and suggest the present liquidator, Grant Thornton, be replaced.
Grant Thornton’s decision not to call an initial creditors’ meeting had taken away their ‘‘one opportunity’’ to replace the liquidator, Tempest’s founding director Damien Grant said.
‘‘I think the creditors should be given the opportunity to vote.’’
Grant, a liquidator himself, said he was ‘‘not happy’’ about the fact that Ebert’s shareholders had beaten him to the punch in appointing a liquidator a day after Tempest had indicated it was going to do so.
He said his action should not be interpreted as any slight on Grant Thornton, but the company had worked for Ebert director Kelvin Hale before, in a company called Trebe.
As a large creditor, Grant said he wanted total assurance the liquidator would ask the toughest questions.
New Zealand liquidators in general had a poor record of holding to account the people who had appointed them, Grant said. ‘‘The problem . . . is that once you go down that track, and you say, we are the sort of liquidation firm that will sue company directors, then they won’t touch them.’’
For that reason, he said, he was recommending creditors chose BDO, the liquidators of collapsed building giant Mainzeal, which is taking Mainzeal’s directors to court.
BDO’s decision to take that case had been a brave, ‘‘huge call’’, he said.
Grant said it was a conflict of interest for his own company, Waterstone Insolvency, to be involved.