Pub­lish­ing wind­ing up notices — avoid­ing dupli­ca­tion of costs

In Brief

Changes to the way most cor­po­rate insol­ven­cy notices have to be pub­lished came into effect on 1 July 2012. The Supreme Court of New South Wales has pro­vid­ed some guid­ance about how par­ties can avoid the cost of hav­ing to pub­lish notice of any appli­ca­tion to wind up a com­pa­ny on both the new ASIC web­site and in the print media

Changes requir­ing most cor­po­rate insol­ven­cy notices to be pub­lished on a new web­site run by the Aus­tralian Secu­ri­ties and Invest­ments Com­mis­sion (ASIC) came into effect on 1 July 2012.

Details of the changes are dis­cussed in our recent arti­cle.

As dis­cussed in our pre­vi­ous arti­cle, the intro­duc­tion of the new web­site pub­li­ca­tion require­ments has not for­mal­ly altered the require­ment under Fed­er­al Court and Supreme Court Rules, requir­ing print media pub­li­ca­tion of notices of wind­ing up appli­ca­tions. This rais­es the issue of dupli­ca­tion of costs for pub­li­ca­tion of wind­ing up notices as they would need to be pub­lished both on the web­site in return for pay­ment of a fee and in the print media.

To address this issue, the Reg­istry of the Supreme Court of New South Wales has indi­cat­ed that, sub­ject to any future deter­mi­na­tion of the issue by the Court, notice of a wind­ing up appli­ca­tion does not need to be pub­lished in a dai­ly news­pa­per, pro­vid­ed that any wind­ing up appli­ca­tion filed with the Supreme Court is sup­port­ed by an affi­davit that proves that notice of the appli­ca­tion has been pub­lished on the ASIC web­site and requests that the require­ments of Rule 5.6 of the Supreme Court (Cor­po­ra­tions) Rules 1999 (NSW) be dis­pensed with.

The issue is like­ly to be clar­i­fied fur­ther in due course through deter­mi­na­tion by the Court and leg­isla­tive amend­ments to the Fed­er­al Court and Supreme Court Rules.

If you would like fur­ther infor­ma­tion or have any spe­cif­ic ques­tions about the changes, please con­tact us.