fti wins an award!

Michael West in his weekly column in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald has given out his 2013 dubious distinction awards "for high achievement in the corporate arena."

ARL shareholders will no doubt be delighted to read that FTI, ARL's manager, has been honoured:


"It is symbolic that Ronnie Biggs died this week, for it is time to honour the nation's most brazen racketeers - the insolvency practitioners.

PPB is always a robust contender in this category, and again performed well in running up the costs of the Lehman Australia estate to around the $80 million mark.

But the Ronnie Biggs Award goes to FTI Consulting, which earned this elegy from a Queensland judge: ''Extravagant waste of members' funds'', ''sniping and argumentative'' affidavits, sending ''misleading'' statements to creditors. ''My view is that they have preferred their own commercial interests to the interests of the fund,'' wrote Justice Jean Dalton of the Supreme Court.

In a triumph of pettifogging, the solicitors for FTI filed an affidavit of over 800 pages … "that was of such marginal relevance that it was not referred to in either written or oral submissions by any party''. In insolvency, they call this "surpassing the industry standard"."

You can see the full list of prizewinners here:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/cash-grabs-win-top-gong-in-year-of-high-achievement-20131220-2zr4q.html