PIS, AFS roll up sleeves on FEA mess

Professional Investment Services (PIS), Australian Financial Services (AFS) and a number of other advisers have pooled resources to establish a lobby group for Forest Enterprises Australia (FEA) investors.

Named the FEA Growers Group, the initiative is aimed at salvaging value for investors in managed investment schemes offered by the failed agribusiness group.

Heading up the FEA Growers Group is PIS’ Rob Burns, who is also chairman of the ‘Save My Trees’ program created by PIS following Great Southern’s collapse.

Mike Butler, head of compliance for AFS, is also part of the committee, having also been involved in creditors’ committees related to Great Southern, as well as other insolvencies.

Also on the committee is high profile financial planner David Haintz, a former director of the Financial Planning Association (FPA), a Fellow of the FPA, an FPA disciplinary committee member and member of the FPA’s professionalism committee. Haintz was a non-executive director of FEA when it listed in 2000, and is described as a significant investor in number of the FEA Plantations forestry projects. Haintz was also part of the growers group established in the wake of Timbercorp’s collapse.

Other committee members include Andrew Cochrane, director and principal of boutique financial planning firm Cochrane Shaw Capital Management, described as a significant investor in FEA Plantations forestry projects, and Richard Brown, director and owner of Abound Lifestyle Planning, and both an investor and shareholder in FEA.

Others involved in the committee include Owen Lennie, Terry Lynch, and Richard Latham.

The group has created a website, www.feagg.com as a resource centre for FEA growers.

“It is apparent that there are many individuals and organisations taking or considering separate legal action, which may be more beneficial if coordinated effectively,” the website states.

“This avoids the possibility that individual efforts, however well intentioned, may be counter-productive to achieving the best outcome possible for all.”

The group said it would lobby politicians and government agencies, as well as FEA’s administrators and receivers, on behalf of FEA investors. The group will also seek to make contact with parties who may be “commercially interested” in what remains of FEA.

“We are focused on gaining significant levels of support from growers, dealer groups, and other interested parties to enable us to have scale in working through lobbying and commercially viable options,” the website states.

“The trees are our collective assets and we need to act intelligently to ensure that we are taking appropriate action, so that we do not have what is rightfully and morally ours, taken away from us for the benefit of others.”

PIS was one of the biggest investors in FEA’s agribusiness managed investment schemes, and AFS was another strong supporter. Another website, FEA Growers, was established on FEA’s entry into administration, but the two are not associated.

FEA was not the latest corporate casualty in the agribusiness MIS sector, with the Rewards Group last week entering administration and receivership.