I attended the second creditors meeting of Bill Express and twelve related companies in Melbourne this afternoon. The key resolution of the meeting was to put the companies into liquidation.
Leading up to the decision to liquidate the businesses, the creditors meeting heard further detail of the mess the business created for itself through an unnecessarily complex structure, lack of transparency, inadequate control and questionable business practices.
One comment which interested me was that Directors thought negative media commentary played a part in the downfall of the company. I am not aware of any negative commentary which was untruthful.
The only glimmer of financial hope for secured creditors such as the ANZ bank is a sale of the business. 7-Eleven has some time left on their exclusivity arrangement around this. For their bid to go anywhere, they will need supplier and retail network support. It will be interesting to see how newsagents react should 7-Eleven get to the point where they are ready to ask the question.
The ACCC and ASIC have active investigations into various aspects of Bill Express. I hope that these are fruitful as they may help provide closure for newsagents. I would also hope that formal interviewing of Directors around the question of possible insolvent trading and dubious transactions is useful.
Today’s meeting was funereal in mood as one would expect.
There is no good news in this – hundreds of millions of dollars lost by ANZ, Optus, Vodafone, Telstra and others and the considerable potential future losses of tens of millions by newsagents relating to Bill Express equipment lease.
I hope that anyone associated with the Bill Express business who is found to have breached their obligations is brought to account.
Hi Mark,
Thank you for the commentary. You seem to be the only person or organisation providing any information. Mores the pity about the Associations but there you go.
Whilst we feel for the major creditors, it’s important to recognise that if ANZ had done due diligence as they demand of small business, if they had demanded up to date company returns as they do of small business, if they demanded security as they do of small business, then in all probability, they would not have approved the facility which Bill Express spent so well.
This debacle reminds me of the Westpac / Alan Bond mess of the 70’s. If westpac hadn’t given Bond a $billion unsecured, he wouldn’t have been tempted.
And let’s remember who paid for that. The shareholders and customers as fee gouging began.
Beware of ANZ doing this to it’s customers to recover the losses.
Thank you again for your commentary Mark.
Thanks Lorraine.
Regarding 7-Eleven, I received a call yesterday from a person researching Newsagent’s willingness to continue the BE system should they (7-11) resurrect it.
They also wanted to know what state our BE equipment was in (i.e still connected or not).
I said that although the concept of bill payment was desireable, there would need to be a completely new cost structure and a more transparent, simpler and fairer agreement before I would reconsider.
Hi Bruce,
I agree, but 7-11 would need to get Telstra on board as a biller, in the country areas were reception to other mobile networks is limited, most country people are with the telstra network. In the ruiral farming areas the farmers pay a number of accounts with one cheque made out to Aust Post, so if Telstra are not on board as a biller any possible re-education of the customers is not possible.
This also applies to recharge, in our area we can only recieve mobile service with a Telstra F165 Handset.
This was the problem that we had with the BX network and nobody within the BX area would listen or try and comprehend, when we signed with BE 3.5 yrs ago we were told that Telstra would be on board as a biller within 3-months
regards
Telstra has an exclusive over the counter bill payment contract /agreementwith AP for five years, which is due to end within the next 18 months so the 7/11 bill payment thing will have to wait until at least then.
The ANF decided not to go to this meeting. They say the Bill Express issue is out of their hands. Their attention is on recruiting new members. They are getting them too. Most are not newsagents. They need something as money is tight with no Bill Express money coming in and resignations from newsagents still coming. 28 this week. Maybe they will have to change the name of the organisation. The most recent sacking will not save the finances. Nor will the office move.
Inside,
Your comments are valued.
I presume the newly recruited members are mostly subagents which I didn’t think were eligible for full membership.
Are you aware of what membership numbers have fallen to?
How many will remain when the dust settles?
Anon, the ANF changed it’s constitution last year to allow an “associate member” category. As I understand it, the guidelines for this membership haven’t been developed even though the provision is there.
hi i have got a qbox used to display instore advetisement on 2 screens but after bill express went belly up i need new softwere to display my ads what would you guys recomend