Grant Thornton, voluntary administrator of Fairview Architectural - a leading supplier of ACM panels for Signage and Architectural use - has filed a report with the Federal Court and requested an extension of until October 13th for the ‘convening meeting’. A second meeting of creditors will take place on August 25th to vote on this.
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| Fairview Architectural, Lithgow, NSW - plenty of interest to buy the business |
The requested extension is to allow prospective purchasers to conduct due dilligence, and for Grant Thornton to carefuly analyse each offer.
The Fairview Architectural business was advertised for expressions of interest in the Australian Financial Review and The Australian in July. An offer is already on the table, from FVA Group with connections to the original Director Mr Andrew Gillies.
One source who has seen the balance sheet reports that the business appears sound and its assets exceed liabilities by a considerable degree, but not including the potential damages arising from the two class actiona being brought against Fairview Architectural. If these were to succeed, the company felt it was at risk of insolvent trading, which is why it was put in voluntary administration.
All 52 jobs at Lithgow, NSW are currently preserved and business continues as usual, thanks to a licensing arrangement driven by Fairview Directors.
IMF Bentham, the legal firm handling the class actions is now known as Omni Bridgeway, and has said they have paused the actions in light of Fairview’s administration and will now ask Fairview to provide its liability insurance policies to the Court, so that Omni Bridgeway can pursue the insurers. If proven, these are to include liability under consumer protection legislation and ‘misrepresentation’ (fitness for purpose of the PE cladding) which forms the second class action. It has been reported that, if successful, the class actions could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
It should be noted that similar class actions are underway, involving Halifax Vogel Group in Australia and 3A Composites in Switzerland/Germany.
