Auckland property developer Greg Olliver’s disqualification from company management was reduced by one year, leaving him free to act as a company director from October 2024.
Mr Olliver has been a frequent visitor to the High Court; primarily litigation surrounding ownership and control of properties at Waimarie Street in Auckland seaside suburb St Heliers. Ownership eventually passed to Oceania retirement group.
Management of initial site works for a then proposed subdivision by Mr Olliver resulted in a Companies Office ruling banning him from managing any company until October 2025; a four year ban. His first court challenge to this ban was dismissed eight months later.
Undeterred, Mr Olliver again challenged the ban. Legal argument centred on reasons for liquidation of BBG Holdings Ltd; a company controlled by Mr Olliver intended as the legal vehicle for his ultimately unsuccessful efforts to redevelop Waimarie Street.
Companies Office complaint was that Mr Olliver was a risk to creditors. He had traded BBG whilst insolvent, it said; in particular, by starting earthworks on land it did not yet own, without a firm price for the work to be done, and allowing the work to continue knowing BBG did not have the funds to pay.
There was evidence of this work extending to neighbouring land for the benefit of Mr Olliver personally.
Mr Olliver said Companies Office had inflated and overstated the extent of his supposed mismanagement. Companies Office failed to take into account references provided as to his business acumen, he said. It was also taking a punitive stance, he argued. In its report, Companies Office said: ‘anything less than a substantial period of prohibition would be a slap in the face for all law-abiding directors.’
Reducing the period of disqualification to three years, Justice Tahana said that while Mr Olliver was a risk to creditors and had acted to protect his own interests to the detriment of creditors, the extent of mismanagement was not as serious as the Companies Office found.
BBG liquidator’s final report states unsecured creditors totalling $919,900 received 27 cents in the dollar.
Olliver v. Registrar of Companies – High Court (5.07.23)
23.110