> ... at best ASIC will say that the shares do not have any...

> ... at best ASIC will say that the shares do not have any voting value until the cash has been handed over

I don't think that would, or could, happen. The shares exists, so they can be voted. The company loaned PB the money to buy the shares, and while ASIC might have something to say about the ethics of the loan and the conditions thereof, in the end whether PB has repaid the loan, and the conditions under which the money was loaned to him, have no bearing on the validity of the shares and their voting power. It's just the same as if I took an unsecured loan from the bank to buy shares and defaulted on the loan - the shares are still mine and ASIC couldn't rescind the voting rights of those shares. The bank might sue me to recover the money owed, but that has nothing to do with the voting power of the shares I own. Or maybe I borrowed money to buy a car and didn't repay the loan - VicRoads (in my case) isn't going to rescind the registration of the car and tell me I can't drive it until I repay the bank - that's between me and the bank.

The bottom line is that the company loaned PB money and he legitimately purchased shares with that money (the transaction was a little less straight-forward than that because the collateral for the loan was the shares that weren't yet purchased - but it was a legal transaction (regardless of how we might view the ethics of it)). The shares are good, and they are owned by PB (he can't have sold them unless he has repaid the loan...) - they are not what was loaned (you can't loan shares to someone). PB owes the company money, and if he doesn't pay it they'll take the collateral securing the loan - the shares. That's between PB and the company - not ASIC.