Editor’s note: This article was published on July 31, 2009. The company is no longer in administration.
Sydney-based financial planning firm Announcer Group has been placed in administration, but co-founder and director Andrew Rocks insists the company is in no danger of collapse and the business is trading as usual.
Rocks, who started the business in 1996, says he is in the process of splitting his business interests from his former business parker Lindsay Yelland.
Sule Arnautovic of specialist insolvency firm Jirsch Sutherland says he was appointed by Yelland on 14 July. He says Yelland is owed money following his departure from the business.
Arnautovic says there are other trade creditors but Yelland and other related parties are by far the biggest creditor. A second creditors meeting will be held on 17 August.
“We are pretty confident that the business will be restructured through a deed of company arrangement or sold as going concern.”
He expects a restructure could be completed and the business handed back to Rocks in the first week of September.
Rocks says the administrator will act as an independent third party to oversee the separation of the former business partners and allow the company to “start with a clean slate”.
“It’s by far the best way from a commercial perspective,” Rocks says. He says the company, which has around 1,100 clients and $120 million under advisement, has kept its clients fully informed of the separation maneuvers.
“There’s no difference in the services we are offering.”
Rocks was surprised by a story in this morning’s Australian Financial Review that announced Announcer Group had been placed in administration and linked the news with the collapse of Storm Financial and a string of other small financial planners.
Rocks says the story was particularly ironic given he has been told he has finished in the top three for a soon-to-be-announced award from the AFR’s Asset magazine.
He says he has already had a called from his bank manager at St George Bank, who expressed his support and disappointment with the story’s angle.
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
