The Trust Company (Trust) has been named as a defendant in a case brought in the Federal Court of Australia by a debenture holder of Australian Capital Reserve (ACR) against one of its wholly owned subsidiaries The Trust Company (Nominees) Limited.
In an unusual coincidence Trust announced the case to the Australian Stock Exchange late yesterday afternoon, six years to the day that ACR entered voluntary administration. At that time Pricewaterhouse Coopers was appointed voluntary administrators and in September 2007 was appointed as liquidators.
Trust stated it considered the claim to be without basis and would continue to work in the best interests of debenture holders of ACR and with the liquidators. Trust made no further comment, apart from stating that updates regarding the case would be made in accordance with its market disclosure obligations.
The news comes as Trust is the subject of a take-over bid by Equity Trustees and a buy-out offer from Perpetual, which is being played out before the market and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
The Estate Property Group and its 21 subsidiaries, including its fund-raising arm ACR, went into voluntary administration on 28 May, 2007. ACR raised funds through a series of nine prospectuses offering unsecured deposit notes to the investing public from April 2000 to December 2006.
In March of last year the three former directors of ACR were sentenced to separate terms of imprisonment by the NSW District Court following an investigation by the Australian Securities and Investments Commissions.
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