Liquidator sells off pieces of broken Hart

By Kate Kachor

THE chance of a recovery for embattled financial services group Harts Australasia seems almost impossible, as parts of the group were offered up for sale by its provisional liquidator.

First Mortgage Corporation (FMC) is the first of the 36 subsidiaries within the Harts group to come up for sale. The group, which was put up for sale mid-way through last week, can be bought as a whole entity, or sectioned off in a partial sale through Deloitte Touche Tomatsu, the provisional liquidator appointed to Harts.

FMC is a boutique residential lender and specialist securitisation business and has a diverse loan security portfolio spread between Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. Its current book value is around $103 million.

Deloitte Touche Tomatsu partner, corporate reorganisation group and member of Harts provisional liquidator team, John Greig, says the planned sale of FMC is in line with the duties of a provisional liquidator.

Greig toldMoney Managementthat even though FMC has to be sold there has been a high level of interest for the group.

Despite being unable to give exact details on the number of interested parties for FMC, Greig did say he and his provisional liquidator partner, Robert Duff, received unsolicited interest even before FMC had been officially placed on the market.

As to further news within the Harts camp, Greig says he couldn’t even hazard a guess about the number of staff who have left the group, either of their own volition or who have been let go.

“In terms of what we have been able to obtain, there has been a number of people we have not continued to employ. But people were leaving well before we were appointed,” he says.

Of the number of people who have already left the Harts group, Greig says there were a number from the executive administration areas and those who are not fee generators for the businesses. Other areas where Harts employees have left is from the Harts property group.

A source close to the Harts group toldMoney Managementthat Harts founder and executive director Steve Hart has left the group, while many accounting groups who previously sold their groups to Harts are planning to buy them back. At time of print, no definite numbers were available.