Pirate fund John Bridgeman all at sea as liquidators appointed to related firm

It’s named after a long-dead English pirate so maybe its not surprising that this Brisbane investment firm now finds itself sailing in troubled waters.

JOLLY ROGER

WHOEVER would have thought an investment firm named after a famous pirate would find itself in a spot of bother.

Brisbane-based John Bridgeman, named after a 17th century English pirate and founded by former Bond University academic Stuart McAuliffe, Monday announced that liquidators had been appointed to a related operation JB Financial Group, in which it has a direct and indirect interest.

JB Financial’s trouble stems from a dispute with US-based growth fund Partners for Growth over an alleged breach of a finance facility. Yesterday, Partners for Growth called in liquidators under the security related to the facility.

Stuart McAuliffe in pirate garb.

JB Financial meanwhile says it is seeking legal advice about the validity of the liquidators’ appointment and the “circumstances in which this appointment had occurred.”

JB Financial appears to have hit troubled waters at least a year back. 

According to its latest annual report filed with ASIC it made a loss of $19.2 million in the year to June 30 2018.

In September last year, John Bridgeman extended a $4.5 million debt facility to the company, which lists its activities as including broking, foreign currency exchange and emerging ‘disruptive’ technology applications in the financial services sector.

McAuliffe, who resigned as managing director of JB Financial in February 2018, was not contactable yesterday.

John Bridgeman is an alias for 17th century pirate Henry Avery, who eluded capture but according to some authorities subsequently died in poverty.

WALKING THE PLANK

SEPARATELY, John Bridgeman announced yesterday that it was suing the National Stock Exchange (NSX) in the Federal Court over the suspension of its shares from the alternative market back in April for alleged breach of listing rules.

Earlier this month NSX further announced it was suspending John Bridgeman’s shares from official quotation for failing to release its audited financial statements for the year ended 30 June. 

John Bridgeman is now seeking a court declaration that the decision was invalid and of no effect, an injunction requiring the NSX to reinstate trade in its securities alongside damages, interest and costs. 

In a statement to the ASX, the exchange said it intended to defend the action.

BANKING ON IT?

TROUBLED JM Kelly Group told the building watchdog it had $3 million in the bank even though it knew it could not access the cash, a court has heard.

Barrister Craig Wilkins, acting for JM Kelly liquidator Derrick Vickers of PwC, told the Federal Court that the Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC) was told about the funds in September 2018 a month before the company collapsed owing creditors an estimated $50 million.

Geoff Murphy of JM Kelly leaves Brisbane Federal Court in August.

Mr Wilkins said the funds were in a term deposit that could not be used without the permission of the National Australia Bank but were described to the QBCC by JM Kelly as cash at hand. At the time, the QBCC was performing an audit of the company’s finances to see if its licence should be removed. Mr Wilkins said JM Kelly founder Geoff Murphy told his son John Murphy, the director of the company, that while the funds could not be used it should be included in a financial report to the QBCC.

Mr Wilkins said Mr Geoff Murphy told his son the $3 million meant the company’s finances did not “look too bad.”Mr John Murphy told the court that he did not accept his father’s opinion that the money could not be accessed.

LYNDA’S BIG 50

A TRUE trailblazer in Brisbane’s stockbroking scene has just clocked up a half century in the business.  Lynda Myers started working at Burrells in October 1969 as a fresh-faced 19-year -old where she tells your diarist she immediately got the stock broking “bug.”

“I just loved the idea of investment and of turning up every day when something new would happen,” Lynda says.

Over the past 50 years, she has seen it all from manual paper transactions typed up on a typewriter to the “chalkies” who used to write up trades on the floor of the old Brisbane Stock Exchange.  

Before the Brisbane exchange closed in 1990, Lynda was one of just two female operators on the trading floor where she says she learnt the “art of bluff”.

Lynda celebrated her long service with French champagne and canapes at the Ovolo Incholm Hotel in Wickham Tce.  

Guests included the various stockbrokers around town she’s mentored along staff from DDH Graham, AMG Super, GBST, Over the Wire, PWC and PKF Hackett Accountants.

Action on the Brisbane Stock Exchange in the late 1960s.