Two Marks going national
By Leonie Wood
March 31 2003
One year after the collapse of Arthur Andersen forced two of the firm's Melbourne partners, Mark Korda and Mark Mentha, to go it alone, the pair have expanded their insolvency specialist business by linking with peers in three other states.
From today, the corporate recovery specialists Clout & Associates in Perth and Brisbane and accountants Duncan Powell in Adelaide will become part of a national KordaMentha partnership.
KordaMentha already have operations in Melbourne and Sydney.
The move is a bid to prove that KordaMentha, which is liquidating Ansett Airlines, has enough resources in all states to ensure it secures a share of mandates for mid-sized or big companies facing corporate restructuring or insolvency.
Other insolvency specialists argue that the industry is going through one of its quietest periods since the mid-1980s after all the excitement of the collapses of HIH, Ansett, Pasminco, One.Tel and Harris Scarfe.
Ansett's liquidation continues and, while KordaMentha has about $360 million on hand after selling assets including the lease of Ansett's passenger terminal in Sydney, priority creditors such as the Commonwealth and employees are still owed hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Commonwealth alone is owed just over $330 million for paying employees their wages, holiday pay, sick leave and up to eight weeks of salary for redundancy.
The Transport Minister, John Anderson, is expected to ask Cabinet today to suspend the $10 Ansett ticket levy on domestic air tickets.
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