Bolton merry-go-round keeps on spinning

The 27-year-old Melbourne boy had tried to wind up the embattled manager of Brisbane's Airport Link toll road project, but then struck a secret $4.5 million deal to vote against his own resolutions.

Since then BrisConnections has been keen to get the message out that it's "business as usual" on the toll road front.

The underwriters of its float, Macquarie Capital Partners and Deutsche Bank, have stumped up the instalment cash, tunnelling has started beneath Brisbane streets, and a final decision will be made on who will win the rights to install tolling technology for the tunnel project this month.

This week, representatives of BrisConnections will visit the team at ConnectEast Group in Melbourne.

Maybe they will swap notes on who did the most damage to the Leighton Holdings balance sheet last financial year Leighton booked impairments of $183 million for its investment in toll road companies BrisConnections and ConnectEast topped its list of write-downs. It was Leighton the owner of Thiess John Holland, which has the contract to build Airport Link that paid Bolton $4.5 million for his voting rights four months ago.

Many saw that deal as the end, with BrisConnections living to fight on and Bolton walking away with $4.5 million. But there was always going to be an epilogue in the courts.

Bolton's private company, Australian Style Investments, amassed 77 million partly paid BrisConnections stapled securities for less than $77,000.

That 19.7 per cent stake in the company came with $154 million of further instalment liabilities attached, but Bolton was able to offload the majority of those units via a put option deal he had with his father's best friend, John Howard Williams. All except for 1.3 million units on which he owes BrisConnections $1.3 million for the first instalment payment. BrisConnections has issued a statutory demand for the money.

Bolton hasn't given up his fight against BrisConnections. Australian Style is back in the Supreme Court of Queensland on Thursday, appealing against a finding by Justice Peter Dutney that the underwriting agreement with Macquarie and Deutsche Bank for the float of BrisConnections predated the BrisConnections constitution.

Lawyers for Australian Style will argue that the constitution existed first. If they are successful, it could open the door for further litigation against BrisConnections.

In the meantime, BrisConnections is pursuing debtors who defaulted on their instalment payments.

So far there have been 39 statutory demands and 10 writs, and the individuals it is chasing for cash are spread far and wide.

One statutory demand has gone to Australian Style. Another for $8.5 million has gone to Victorian company, Raffles Lodge, part-owned by Melbourne medical practitioner Dr Magdy Ramzy.

Bhagwaan Enterprises has been issued a statutory demand for $500,000, while an elderly widow in Surrey Hills faces losing her home after her husband sank a couple of thousand dollars into BrisConnections units six months before he died. "She didn't even know about the investment or even heard of BrisConnections until his will was read," said Melbourne barrister Geoffrey Slater, who is also representing Raffles Lodge. An application to have the 39 cases co-vested to the Supreme Court of Victoria failed yesterday, but Mr Slater will get the chance to argue the case for Raffles Lodge in Victoria next week.

Mr Slater will argue the debt never crystallised, as BrisConnections did not run a legitimate auction of its defaulted units in accordance with its constitution.

BrisConnections auctioned the defaulted units with a reserve price of $1 each, with a final $1 instalment to pay. At the time of the auction, these units could be bought on-market at a fraction over 50? each. If successful, the case could open the gates for further court action.

Complaint dismissed

THE Takeovers Panel has dismissed a complaint from Queensland gas explorer Blue Energy regarding ANZ Bank's stakeholding in the company.

ANZ appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers as receiver of Primebroker Securities in July last year, and inherited a 25 per cent stake in Blue Energy as a result. According to the application lodged with the panel, PwC wanted two members of Blue Energy's board to resign because of "corporate governance issues".

The receiver also threatened to call a shareholder meeting to vote on resolutions to remove the directors, as well as Blue Energy chairman and chief executive Peter Cockcroft, if they did not resign.

Blue Energy was seeking an order restraining both the receiver and ANZ from calling such a meeting without the consent of the panel. It also wanted ANZ to sell down its interest in the company to below 5 per cent.

The panel declined to conduct proceedings as "the application had not been made in a timely manner and that there was no reasonable prospect that it would make a declaration of unacceptable circumstances".

In making its decision, the panel noted that "the applicant's real concern appears to be related to a board dispute", and ANZ's disclosure of its stake in Blue energy "appears to have been in compliance with the Corporations Act".

Adviser out five years

THE corporate plod has banned a Melbourne trader from Macquarie Equities from providing financial services for five years for participating in market manipulation of Bill Express shares.

ASIC investigated Newton Chan, a senior adviser at Macquarie Equities, and found he used trading accounts to place orders in Bill Express which "had the effect of creating or maintaining an artificial price for trades in the stock".

ASIC found Chan entered false names in Macquarie Equities' electronic ordering system.