BCS - BrisConnections Unit Trusts

[Enzyme]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

This article has more significant developments in it than any we've seen in a while:

Macquarie threatens legal action to stop Bolton

Now Macquarie are taking legal action against ASI to prevent the meeting!

But the judge said this:

"Who is going to speak for the unit holders?" Justice Robson asked. "One of the complications is that BrisConnections is not representing the interests of the unit holders. BrisConnections is ringing them up and telling them not to vote. One of the problems is that the unit holders are at the bottom of the queue."

Yay.

 

[Cats]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

Another personal story. Doubt that this stuff adds anything at this stage.
http://business.smh.com.au/business...at-risk-20090324-989e.html?sssdmh=dm16.367945

If more untiholders stuck together maybe it would make a difference to the court proceedings ?.....see article in couriermail......
Judge Robson said in court
"Its a real problem, I think in this case the unitholders ....seem to be at the bottom of the queue "

 

[Prospector]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

What I did notice in this link is that this couple also bought through Commsec! Who do not offer the final warning, unlike NAB (My experience) and ETRade(ANZ - Julia's). Has anyone caught up in this fiasco NOT bought through Commsec?
Hm, wonder if the documents presented to court have been about this very thing as raised on ASF?

And this:
Outside court Mr Csutoros said he bought the units on CommSec for 0.3 cents each, and there was no warning that the shares were partly paid and two further $1 payments had to be made on each share.
"I just simply clicked and they were mine,'' he said.
"There should have been a warning, but there was none.''
Mr Csutoros said his house was worth "about $450,000, maybe $500,000'' and he would lose it if the first call was made on April 29.
Mr Slater told the court there was no warning of further payments on the CommSec site. "It's simply not there".
For $600 he stands to lose the family home. it's outrageous, almost criminal.

 

[sails]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

If more untiholders stuck together maybe it would make a difference to the court proceedings ?.....see article in couriermail......
Judge Robson said in court
"Its a real problem, I think in this case the unitholders ....seem to be at the bottom of the queue "

Cats, I agree. If unwitting unit holders worked together (or at least the ones that are still holding) - the judge might begin to see another very sad side of this debacle and that there are many others caught in the same way.

 

[NiMaC]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

The Yahoo forum topic that "Ray" fellow was on has been deleted all of a sudden. A bit strange don't you think!
http://au.messages.yahoo.com/finance/finance_stocktalk/107989?p=1

 

[Enzyme]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

Has "Ray" done a runner? Did he delete the thread, or was it deleted on him. Someone over there is querying what happened, but no responses yet: link I'm guessing that he is an ordinary bloke who got a bit excited at the possibility of a 30-50 cent return per share on the windup of the trusts (as was mentioned in court), and things might have got a bit too real for him.

Perhaps he got an email from the BrisConnections legal team who monitor this thread closely. In fact, every time there is a new post in this thread there is a momentary holdup in the proceeding in the Victorian Supreme Court as the noise of 50+ lawyers receiving SMS alerts of the new post drowns out the business of the court. *

It is a measure of how bizarre the situation is when some anonymous bloke on the internet dissapearing without taking peoples shares for a tiny fraction of what people paid for them is a bad thing.

I guess unit holders are left with the Byrnes offer. At least that has a name, address, phone number and email address - thanks to the letter posted by Cats.

* When I say fact in this context I am using a loose interpretation of the word, with an actual intended meaning closer to something I made up

 

[Enzyme]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

Meanwhile, market depth continues to fall. There are seven fewer sellers and over ten million fewer units for sale today than there was yesterday. Where are they all going? Byrnes?

 

[sails]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

Meanwhile, market depth continues to fall. There are seven fewer sellers and over ten million fewer units for sale today than there was yesterday. Where are they all going? Byrnes?

Or could it be that Ray got his desired quota? Of course, all conjecture, but certainly interesting to watch. Only time will tell...

 

[steve999]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

What legal rights do Macquarie have to stop the meeting? Or are they just trying to scare the shareholders?

 

[sails]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

I don't think this article has been posted yet - it's titled "Macquarie threatening legal action to stop Bolton": http://business.theage.com.au/busin...egal-action-to-stop-bolton-20090324-98z4.html - and some excerpts:
This one sounds a bit vague:

The letter also states that Macquarie will seek an injunction, but does not specify precisely what it wants to injunct. "It's a little confusing," said one of the parties involved in the case.

and as quoted by the judge in the above article:

"Who is going to speak for the unit holders?" Justice Robson asked. "One of the complications is that BrisConnections is not representing the interests of the unit holders. BrisConnections is ringing them up and telling them not to vote. One of the problems is that the unit holders are at the bottom of the queue."

and someone has finally pointed out the bottom line:

With almost 80 per cent of the 390 million BrisConnections units on issue held by retail shareholders, many of whom won't be able to make the next call, the underwriters face a massive liability.

 

[Enzyme]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

According to that article Sails posted, the Judge has formed the opinion that BrisConnections are not representing the interests of shareholders.

A lot of us here have been of the same opinion for a long time, but it is highly significant for a supreme court judge to come to the same view. It is significant because under the Corporations Act a company can be wound up if the management are not acting in the interests of members:

CORPORATIONS ACT 2001 - SECT 461

(1) The Court may order the winding up of a company if:

(e) directors have acted in affairs of the company in their own interests rather than in the interests of the members as a whole, or in any other manner whatsoever that appears to be unfair or unjust to other members; or

(f) affairs of the company are being conducted in a manner that is oppressive or unfairly prejudicial to, or unfairly discriminatory against, a member or members or in a manner that is contrary to the interests of the members as a whole; or

(thanks to freddy2 for the original post)

The Court may order the winding up of a company if...affairs of the company are being conducted in a manner that is...contrary to the interests of the members as a whole;"

So unit holders don't even need to have the EGM to wind up BrisConnections. They can wind up BrisConnections in court regardless of the result of the action against ASI . The only problem is finding the cash to fund the remora of lawyers required. But if I had the choice between taking out another mortgage on my house to pay lawyer bills, or losing my house entirely to debt collectors for Macquarie Bank I don't think I'd have to think too long about what I would do.

(though personally I'd look to take up Byrne's offer before it came to that)

 

[NiMaC]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

According to that article Sails posted, the Judge has formed the opinion that BrisConnections are not representing the interests of shareholders.

A lot of us here have been of the same opinion for a long time, but it is highly significant for a supreme court judge to come to the same view. It is significant because under the Corporations Act a company can be wound up if the management are not acting in the interests of members:



(thanks to freddy2 for the original post)

The Court may order the winding up of a company if...affairs of the company are being conducted in a manner that is...contrary to the interests of the members as a whole;"

So unit holders don't even need to have the EGM to wind up BrisConnections. They can wind up BrisConnections in court regardless of the result of the action against ASI . The only problem is finding the cash to fund the remora of lawyers required. But if I had the choice between taking out another mortgage on my house to pay lawyer bills, or losing my house entirely to debt collectors for Macquarie Bank I don't think I'd have to think too long about what I would do.

(though personally I'd look to take up Byrne's offer before it came to that)

Your right Enzyme, the bottom line is Brisconnect has let these toxic securities on to the unsuspecting retail share market, and knowingly stood by and let it all happen. If they were acting responsibly and in the interests of the share holders that they already had, they should have alerted ASX, CommSec and other online brokers to have a warning message before buyers finalized their purchase. Then all this debacle would not have occurred & the genuine shareholders who knew full well what their liability was from the start would have much better value on the securities now. I'd say the affairs of the company have not and are not being conducted in a responsible manner for the majority of the members. Do we have two sets of rules,one set for those with lots of money and the other set for those that have not ? They seem to be employing bully boy tactics which maybe ok if they are all bully boys, but what about poor "mum & dad" investors who got sucked into this scam, and has no way out and could possibly loose everything. Why is ASIC so quite on this? Maybe because Trevor Rowe is on the board? There is something very smelly about the whole affair and it should be investigated further.

 

[Prospector]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

Your right Enzyme, the bottom line is Brisconnect has let these toxic securities on to the unsuspecting retail share market, and knowingly stood by and let it all happen. If they were acting responsibly and in the interests of the share holders that they already had, they should have alerted ASX, CommSec and other online brokers to have a warning message before buyers finalized their purchase.

Maybe they did alert the brokers but Commsec didnt heed it; as both NAB and ANZ did have a warning.

This is an interesting left-field turn though; taking the momentum from the company, back to the stakeholders; and because so many of the retail investors can not afford the instalments, to force them to pay them is totally acting out of their best interests. And I bet any Judge will enforce that line.

 

[AlterEgo]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

I’ve been following this saga with great interest. What legitimate reason could Brisconnections possibly have to stop this meeting? Don’t the unit holders have the right to have a say in how the company is being run?

It seems pretty clear to me that the majority of unit holders don’t have the money for the next instalment, so what is the purpose of dragging everyone through court? According to the following link, Joseph Santamaria, QC, representing BrisConnections stated that “winding up the trust was not in the interests of shareholders” and "The solution proposed by the defendant is no solution". Well if winding up the trust isn’t the solution, then what is the solution? Have Brisconnections proposed a better solution for unit holders? I think not.

In my view, Brisconnections have only themselves to blame for all this mess. They knew long ago that naive retail investors were being trapped in to the situation they now face, and yet they did nothing to prevent it from happening, and haven’t offered shareholders any other solution to their predicament. In my opinion, the directors have handled this whole affair very poorly. They are supposed to be working in the unit holders interests but I don’t see how threats of legal action and bankruptcy are in the unit holders best interests.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25237635-664,00.html

 

[Struzball]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

I'm amazed at the amount of people who don't know about this Brisconnections debacle.

Scarily, even some of the people who work on the AirportLink Project haven't heard there is a problem in the first place!

 

[Enzyme]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

That market depth has been really interesting over the last few days.

At the end of todays trading there were 16 million fewer units in the sell queue than there was at the start - but no trades.

There are roughly 50 million fewer units on offer for sale now than there was a week ago, but there hasn't been any trades. They are going somewhere, and I bet it isn't unit holders suddenly deciding to hold on for the long term.

I expect to see an ASX substantial shareholder notice shortly saying Byrnes (AKA Brisbane Toll Road Link Pty Ltd) has more units than Bolton.

 

[Enzyme]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

I'm sorry if I'm spamming this thread, but this time it is worth it.

BrisConnections CFO Mr Nicholas Lattimore is doing a webcast tomorrow morning at 9:00am on preserving unit holder value. Member of the public are invited to send in messages for the presenter ahead of time. I'm just putting together my message now. Feel free to join in with your own message.

BRISCONNECTIONS UNIT TRUSTS Audio Webcast

 

[Martin 123]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

I'm sorry if I'm spamming this thread, but this time it is worth it.

BrisConnections CFO Mr Nicholas Lattimore is doing a webcast tomorrow morning at 9:00am on preserving unit holder value. Member of the public are invited to send in messages for the presenter ahead of time. I'm just putting together my message now. Feel free to join in with your own message.

BRISCONNECTIONS UNIT TRUSTS Audio Webcast

Yes , he will inform public that they were nominated to Guinness Book of Records as biggest value destroyers in shortest time 1000% in 6 months time.

 

[Martin 123]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

And fun continue:
Justice Robson said the toll-road operator had not given the court sufficient evidence of the company's financial position.

More retail shareholders have come forward to say they were unaware BrisConnections shares came with instalment obligations.

Geoffrey Slater, who is representing individual unit holders, called for Justice Robson to appoint a representative to examine the company's financial position, and to order a meeting where it must disclose all details to shareholders if the EGM is cancelled, and before the instalment due date.

 

[Enzyme]

Re: Brisconnections shareholders - financial ruin

Rebel's bid fails to get court nod

Justice Robson said the toll-road builder had failed to provide the court evidence of whether unit holders would be better off if they were forced to pay the instalments due next month.