HENRY WALKER ELTIN GROUP

HWE was a publicly listed mining services company. Commencing in 1962, then through a series of acquisitions evolved to provide mining services, engineering projects, operations and maintenance services in Australia and overseas. Following a period of significant expansion, HWE was unable to fund a major mining venture in Indonesia, and appointed Administrators.

The Administrators:

• Put in place a communication strategy for all stakeholder groups;
• Ensured stability of operations and management, in a business with in excess of 5,000 employees and contractors;
• Arranged for the sale and closure of unprofitable and non-core businesses;
• Relocated operational leadership to align with core businesses;
• Undertook extensive stakeholder and customer engagement processes;
• Renegotiated terms of major contracts with customers to improve long term outlook;
• Prepared, issued and presented a major report to creditors including meetings for 41 entities undertaken across four locations;
• Undertook a sale process for the Group’s mining services business;
• Structured the sale process by way of a Deed of Company Arrangement;
• Resolved numerous other disputes enabling creditor claims to be assessed;
• Made distributions to creditors totalling 100 cents in the dollar;
• Applied to the Court for Deed Administrators to be appointed liquidators, to enable distributions to shareholders.

The Liquidators have processed distributions to shareholders of 17 cents for share to over 11,000 shareholders by late 2014.