Legal representatives for the investors, Macpherson + Kelley lawyers, have passed on an amended statement of claim to the banking group ahead of its appearance in court in December.
The amended claim comes more than a month after Bendigo and Adelaide Bank declared the litigator had fallen on its own sword.
On 20 October, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank informed the market that M+K had stumbled in its attempt to secure a positive outcome for clients after stating in a media release “Great Southern Class Action Struck Out”.
At the time, M+K principal accredited commercial litigation specialist Ron Willemsen called the move by the bank “premature”.
“Only the formal document within the court proceeding which set out the key allegations in the case was struck out because it needed more details of facts which showed how the business operations of two related companies were intertwined,” Willemsen said.
“The company Great Southern Managers Australia Limited was the responsible entity for the managed investment schemes and Great Southern Finance Pty Ltd acted as the financier for any investor who wished to obtain a loan from that company.
“The statement of claim which Bendigo recently attacked comprised 43 pages. Today, we have delivered to Bendigo’s lawyers the expanded and more detailed statement of claim which now comprises 73 pages.”
While the new court date is only a few weeks away, Willemsen said he was confident M+K had now established a firm statement of claim.
“We have now established the intermeshing of the responsible entity and the finance arm and so that those two companies together pretty much acted in unison to promote and sell new MIS projects to people with finance to those who wanted it,” he said.
“Because of the unlawful conduct arising from breaches from the Corporations Act we say we are entitled to declare those loans as originally held by Great Southern as void.
“Therefore Bendigo Bank ends up carrying a valueless loan portfolio because they can’t have all of a sudden value attaching to loans that were held as void in the original lender’s hands.”
Willemsen said the amended statement of claim will be filed as an exhibit to an affidavit and on 7 December he will seek to file the amended version of the claim.
“It hasn’t actually officially been filed but it has been distributed to the parties and submitted to the court as an affidavit,” he said.
It is M+K’s estimate that about 10,700 investors invested in the 2005 plantation scheme and around 7780 invested in the 2006 scheme.
“Of the total of approximately 2000 Great Southern investors for whom M+K acts, we believe about 60 per cent are investors who still have outstanding loans with Bendigo (or Javelin Asset Management),” Willemsen said.
“Another 30 per cent are people we believe once held a loan from Bendigo but the loan has since been fully repaid. The remaining 10 per cent are people who made a cash investment, not utilising the finance facility offered by GSF [Great Southern Finance].”
