A Brisbane-based resources minnow that has piled up enormous losses has fallen over for a second time

A Brisbane-based company has collapsed for the second time in two years - appointing administrators after its latest bid to raise capital fell woefully short. But can it make a second Lazarus-like return from the dead?

Carbon Energy CEO Bryan O'Donnell

A Brisbane-based resources minnow which has piled up enormous losses now has the dubious distinction of falling over not once, but twice.

Carbon Energy just appointed two blokes at restructuring mob KordaMentha as voluntary administrators after their latest capital raising scheme fell woefully short of the $1.5 million target.

A mere $280,820 was generated from investors as doubts lingered over potential projects in South Africa. Carbon Energy even acknowledged “the expectation that the company is likely to become insolvent at some future time’’.

Despite the huge setback, the head office in Milton remains up and running.

MAJOR BRISBANE BAR OPERATOR GOES BUST

Boss Bryan O’Donnell told City Beat yesterday that he did not expect the listed firm to fall in to liquidation although he would not comment about whether talks are under way with a white knight investor to recapitalise the outfit.

He highlighted the fact that Carbon Energy has “unique, world class intellectual property’’ in the form of something called “keyseam technology’’ used in highly-controversial underground coal gasification (now banned in Queensland) and the production of hydrogen around the world.

Amazingly, Carbon Energy previously collapsed in late 2016 after suffering a jaw-dropping $100 million net loss the previous year and a complex refinancing deal fell through.

But, against the odds, administrators managed to pull it back from the brink in July last year after investors approved a deed of company arrangement and the board lined up $19 million of fresh capital from a cornerstone investor based in Hong Kong. It also snared a $1 million R&D tax rebate in January.

Yet, since then, more troubles have flared up. A project in China described in the last annual report as “our recent key focus up until the second half of 2018’’ did not proceed.

The red ink has also continued to flow, with a $717,098 loss in the last financial year and an eye-watering $39.3 million loss in 2017.

So whether the company can make another Lazarus-like return from the dead remains to be seen.

 

LIME LIABILITY

Unless you’re living under a rock, you would have seen people zipping around Brisbane on those nifty electric Lime scooters.

While users might see a cheap and easy way to get from point A to point B, lawyers are seeing an opportunity. Indeed, they are smelling blood.

Calling them “a nightmare on wheels,’’ one legal eagle has warned that riders could be liable if they injure pedestrians during a trial period which kicked off last month and runs through December 31.

Mayank Mittal, Vinicius Machado Campos and Mitchell Price at Brisbane Botanical Gardens in Brisbane CBD. (AAP Image/Claudia Baxter)

Lawyer Trent Johnson alleged this week that there is “little or no regulation’’ over how up to 500 of the scooters are used or where they are left.

“The person who has hired the scooter via the App will generally be liable in those circumstances as they bear legal responsibility for it,’’ he said.

If a rider injures someone and then flees the scene, will Lime, a San Francisco-based startup now worth $14 billion and active in 125 cities, willingly turn over their details without a court order or subpoena?

That remains unclear. But what’s certain is there are still significant grey areas as, once again, a technological innovation outpaces government’s ability to regulate it.

“I have no doubt that we will see accidents and injuries before the scheme trial ends,’’ Johnson warned.

 

OLD AND NEW

It was a case of the old Broncos and the new at the Norman Hotel this week.

We hear former beer baron Bernie Power, the first major sponsor of the team, indulged in a very long lunch with his golfing buddies that went well past 6pm on Monday.

By contrast, Broncos chair Karl Morris broke bread that same evening in the venue with new coach Anthony Seibold and a few others in under two hours.