ouch!,-that huirst, page-6

I hope you are not a manager of Bingo,because your selective statement from limited circulated local that you referred to does not stack up against The Australian,


Andrew Main
From:The Australian
March 24, 201112:00AM

A GROUP of 5100 mainly elderly Australian investors is set to share in the $29 million settlement with a trustee company over its failure to spot that Fincorp was probably insolvent three years before the property developer collapsed in March 2007.

Lawyers Slater & Gordon were yesterday trumpeting the second class-action win in Australian courts in two weeks after Maurice Blackburn's $95m settlement on March 10 on behalf of 4000 cardboard box buyers from cartel suppliers Visy and Amcor.

The ratification of the deal reached with Sandhurst Trustees yesterday by judge Michelle Gordon in Melbourne's Federal Court comes just two days before Fincorp founder Eric Krecichwost faces sentencing in the Sydney District Court on three charges of dishonesty that each carry a maximum jail sentence of five years.

The plaintiffs are investors who put money into Fincorp after the release of the group's 2004 results, on the basis that Sandhurst, appointed in March that year, should have found even then that there were problems with the group's finances.



Mark and Rhonda Harrison were set in 2006 to move from Sale, Victoria, to Queensland with $330,000 of savings when Fincorp collapsed. Their money was supposedly secured but it took two years to get just over half of it back and they took that up to $293,000 thanks to the settlement agreed yesterday. "That's a lot better for everybody," said Mr Harrison.

Secured noteholders have recovered between 53c and 58c in the dollar of the $170m they invested but unsecured holders who put in $30m had to wait until yesterday to get their first certainty of repayment of any sort.

Yesterday's deal means the 5100 possible claimants, including the original 200 to file the class action, will get a letter from the lawyers asking them whether they want to "opt out" of a payment from the settlement.