Wow,got to give it to 'em,they've got balls,why?,you may well ask,let me know WHY they are desperate to get into the plantations in WA GTP ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tony Jack's Black Tree consortium will launch a compensation claim on behalf of investors in Great Southern's ill-fated 2007 managed forestry scheme, after a Supreme Court judge yesterday dismissed the consortium's eleventh-hour bid to keep the project alive.
Great Southern collapsed in May 2009 after raising $2.3 billion from 43,000 investors in myriad forestry and horticultural managed investment schemes over its lifetime.
In a bid to recoup debts owed to the failed group's syndicate of bankers, receivers McGrathNicol struck a deal in January to sell Great Southern's forestry estate to the New Forests consortium for $415 million. Most of the MIS projects on the land were taken on by Gunns last year, but McGrathNicol moved to wind up the 2007 and 2008 schemes.
But Black Tree lodged a caveat over the 2007 land to have the MIS leases reinstated, claiming the project was viable if restructured and could have produced more than $30 million of harvested timber if managed through to completion.
After a hearing in the Victorian Supreme Court in March, Justice James Judd ordered the removal of the caveats, noting there was a "great deal of uncertainty" about the scheme.
A "bitterly disappointed" Mr Jack said yesterday that Black Tree was seeking legal advice.
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