George Wang 'within hours' of taking over failed broker BBY - The Australian
05.27.2015
http://m.theaustralian.com.au/business/news/george-wang-within-hours-of-taking-over-failed-broker-bby/story-e6frg906-1227371394278 Source Link
Entrepreneur George Wang is reportedly within hours of taking over failed stockbroker BBY, having signed documents to do the deal that lack only the signatures of the various administrators and receivers.
The price has not been disclosed, but it will not be high.
The deal is now a near certainty although the 150 or so creditors who attended the first creditors’ meeting in Sydney today were loud in demanding answers about where their accounts stood.
There are some 55,000 clients with frozen accounts on the books of the broker, which went under on May 18, of whom “eight or nine thousand’’ are active, according to administrator Ian Hall of KPMG.
Asked why the broker had gone into administration, he said it had suffered “significant’’ losses over the last 18 months, had high overheads, had suffered reduced margins because of increased competition and had financial reporting systems that were “very poor”.
“Those conclusions are subject to a more detailed review,” he said.
The administrators made all of the 120 remaining staff redundant on Tuesday night although, as Mr Hall noted, Mr Wang’s AIMS Financial Services group made offers of employment to all of those staff.
It is not yet clear how many have accepted and several noted yesterday their contracts were much more favourable to AIMS than to themselves.
