Big banks continue to apply screws to long-suffering customers

CREDITORS of a failed Brisbane building company, owed about $5 million, have been told by an insolvency firm that there are a range of options on the table for the future of the 44-year-old firm.

CRUNCH day for creditors of failed building company Sommer & Staff is fast approaching. Creditors, including scores of subbies, owed about $5 million are due to meet next Monday, October 22, to vote on whether the firm can be salvaged.

Trent Hancock, of insolvency firm PKF Australia, has informed creditors that he is looking at various options for the future of the 44-year-old firm, including a deed of company arrangement that could see the firm continue trading.

A crane worker stands on the boom above Citro apartments on Victoria Street, West End. Work has ceased on the construction site while the developer looks for a builder after the collapse of Sommer and Staff. Picture: AAP Image/no byline

To that end, he was liaising with the Queensland Building and Construction Commission about the company’s builder’s licence, which was suspended by the watchdog when the firm hit financial strife earlier this year. Sommer & Staff went into administration last month leaving a major apartment complex at West End unfinished.

Hancock told the first meeting of creditors in September that if the company continued to undertake any more work under various contracts, creditors would be notified. He added his aim was to implement a restructuring package that would provide the maximum possible return to subbies and other creditors.

TRAUMATISED

YOU would have thought that with the current kicking they are receiving at the Royal Commission the big banks and insurance companies would be holding off hiking premiums and other charges to their long-suffering clients.

No such luck, with your diarist receiving a letter in the mail last week notifying him that his CommInsure accident trauma cover was going up a massive 14.9 per cent.

Commonwealth Bank CEO Chief executive Matt Comyn. Picture: James Croucher

When City Beat rang the customer service centre for an explanation, the man on the line claimed the increases were necessary for the policy to “remain sustainable” and the hike was pretty standard across the sector. He also noted that the 14.9 per cent would be on top of a 3 per cent consumer price index increase. Ouch!

Charging top dollar for a product that can only be described as a well-polished turd does not seem smart, but then again the banks are well known for putting greed above common sense.

You might recall CBA, helmed by Matt Comyn has been skewered at the Royal Commission into banking misdeeds. Last month, it apologised for wrongly denying a breast cancer sufferer’s insurance claim because she did not meet its outdated definition of radical breast surgery. CommInsure also faced a scandal and investigation by the regulator in 2016 over its use of out-of-date medical definitions, including for heart attacks. Comyn has admitted the bank has been “rightly criticised for mistakes” and promised to try to fix issues sooner. We are still waiting.

POWERING UP

MORE news on the state’s growing involvement in the burgeoning global battery industry. ASX-listed Pure Minerals Ltd yesterday said it planned to acquire Queensland Pacific Metals (QPM), which is looking at building a nickel processing plant in Townsville to supply growing demand for electric car batteries.

QPM has an agreement to purchase high grade nickel-cobalt from New Caledonia and also holds exploration rights for nickel-cobalt in the Marlborough region of Queensland.

QPM director John Downie, who will join the board of Perth-based Pure Minerals, tells City Beat that the venture is now well placed to ride surging demand for batteries.

Downie says that the proposed plant just north of Townsville could be operating by 2021. That will be good economic news for Townsville, which is still smarting from the closure of Clive Palmer’s Queensland Nickel refinery in 2016 that left 800 workers jobless. Downie and his management team have decades of experience in the nickel industry, including with Queensland Nickel, the Goro Nickel Project and Gladstone Pacific Nickel.