SMS Management & Technology is one of the Australian technology companies left out of pocket by the liquidation of stockbroking firm BBY.
The story of BBY may well go down as a textbook example of corporate skulduggery. At the very least, it’s a story of how creditors got done in by a company going belly up
In June, BBY was placed in liquidation owing creditors and clients more than $40 million. Creditors were unanimous when they voted to liquidate the four companies in the BBY group.
A number of tech companies are unsecured creditors, according to a ledger presented at the second meeting of creditors.
The biggest tech debt goes to IT services company Agility Applications, owed $728,463.
IRESS Market Technology, which provides market data and trading software for private and professional traders, is owed $595,407, while financial services software firm GBST is owed $643,328.
Access Network & Technology, which is part of publicly listed IT solutions provider SMS Management & Consulting, is owed $191,667.
Sources from liquidator KPMG said that these IT companies ran important back-end systems for BBY.
KPMG told creditors it could be months before they would be able to trace the millions of dollars in missing client trust fund accounts.
The tech companies are among the top 10 unsecured creditors for BBY. According to the liquidator’s report, unsecured creditors are likely to get back between zero and 24 cents in the dollar. This is in addition to the $16 million shortfall in client monies.
BBY was owned and run by Glenn Rosewall. His father, the tennis legend Ken Rosewall, and solicitor David Perkins were also on the board.
There are suggestions the firm was trading while insolvent. In a report in June, the administrators concluded that the BBY companies may have been "insolvent since June 2014", a year before it was put it was into administration.
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