CBA does the right thing by kikki.K staff

Kikki K founder Kristina Karlsson. Picture: Hamish Blair

Banker Matt Comyn finds himself at the centre of yet another high profile corporate collapse.

Like at TV chef George Calombaris ’s Made Establishment, his Commonwealth Bank is the lender to the also collapsed designer stationery retailer kikki.K.

Margin Call understands that CBA was running about a $2 million line of credit to founders Kristina Karlsson and Paul Lacy’s operations, but was not the creditor responsible for plunging the 65-store group into receivership on Tuesday after directors earlier in the day first called in administrator Jim Downey from JP Downey & Co.

We hear that in the interests of staff getting paid, CBA has graciously agreed to keep the line of credit open to allow Kikki K to complete this week’s payroll.

So who called in receivers Barry Wight and Bruno Secatore from Cor Cordis?

CBA CEO Matt Comyn. Picture: John Feder.

Only secured creditors can do that, via a registered general security deed, and along with CBA there are three of them, including private equity preference shareholder TDM Growth Partners, which until last Friday were represented on the board by former UBS investment banker Julian Reddick.

When Margin Call gave Reddick a bell, he didn’t call back. We note that former Google exec Alejandro Vendramin mysteriously jumped off as a Kikki K director last week too.

Ordinary shareholder Hung Hing Printing Group is also a secured creditor, while a division of Mark Korda and Mark Mentha’s Korda Mentha is also a shareholder. (That, by the way, explains why Korda Mentha didn’t get the wind-up gig.)

Margin Call hears it was a TDM rep who officially signed the paperwork, but that all three had loaned money to Kikki K.

Under their loan agreements, appointment of an administrator was a default condition, so the move to receivership was virtually automatic.

The goods news in all that though is that Comyn hasn’t pulled the plug so workers are going to get paid.

A four pillar as corporate good guy, who’d have thought? Post-Ken Hayne Royal Commission, maybe the worm really has turned.