“There are only two conditions, and they are the applications for court approval of the settlement agreement and of the liquidators entering into the settlement agreement be granted,” IMF Australia executive director John Walker told InvestorDaily.
“We have always got court approval for settlements in the past,” he added.
“It’s been four odd years, so it hopefully brings to an end the court proceeding and class action and the appeal so that the claims can now be conducted on a non-adversarial process consistent with the judgment we obtained from Justice Rares last year,” Mr Walker said.
In 2009, IMF successfully overturned Lehmans’ deed of company agreement that would have seen client creditors receive a total payout of $25 million.
“They are now expecting four times that,” said Mr Walker, pointing to the expected $170 million-plus clients will receive if the conditional settlement is approved.
“The deed of company arrangement, in our view, undercut their rights, so they were capped at a certain level. It was sponsored by Lehman companies and they wanted to limit the total payment to the client creditors, the churches, councils and charities, to around $42 million for everybody,” he said.
“We are now expecting the claims resolution process to deliver nearly $200 million to client creditors.”
IMF expects to generate $30 million to $40 million from the distributions, according to yesterday’s ASX announcement.
