“We are a small Australian owned company that supplies specialist products to the commercial and industrial sectors. In early 2000 we became involved in a contractual dispute on a major project as a result of the structural failure of some of the product supplied.

We did not feel that there was a fault in the product supplied as it had been installed incorrectly. However, we were unable to reach an agreement with our client and a legal dispute ensued. As a result of the collapse of HIH we were effectively uninsured. Despite our lawyers opinion that we had an excellent case the legal battle became a costly and protracted affair. After several years the financial burden of the legal dispute, coupled with a decline in turnover as a result of the incident, left the company in a much weakened state.

In early 2005 after a recommendation from our accountants the directors appointed Bruce Mulvaney & Co as administrator of the company. In less than a year BMC had achieved what we hadn’t been able to achieve in 5 years, they had the claim against the company withdrawn with each party agreeing to bear their own costs.

In just over a year the company was liquidated as the directors did not desire to enter into a Deed of Company Arrangement. There was a 52 cents in the dollar payout to creditors. The result may have been far worse if we’d continued to fight on. We can only thank Bruce and his team for relieving the significant amount of pressure that we’d been under for 5 years and allowing us to look forward to the future again. We have managed to continue in the same line of business with a new enterprise and have even been able to pay our creditors the remaining 48 cents in the dollar.

Managing Director