David Bergman
Registrar of Personal Property Securities,
Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia (ITSA)
David was appointed as the first Registrar of Personal Property Securities in the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department in June 2010. He is responsible for implementing the new national system which includes finalising the legislative arrangements, implementing the new national PPS Register and assisting industry with the transition to the new system.
David was born in Queensland and completed his law degree at the Queensland University of Technology. He later completed a Masters in Law at the Australian National University.
David was previously responsible for advising the Government on bankruptcy policy and oversaw a very active period of bankruptcy law reform. He was also acting Chief Executive of the Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia and Inspector-General in Bankruptcy from July 2008 to January 2009.
David has also held a range of legal and policy positions in the Australian Taxation Office and the Child Support Agency.
John Canning
Partner
Mallesons
Stephen Jaques
John Canning is a Partner in the Asset Finance division of Mallesons in Sydney where he specialises in asset, property and cross border structured finance transactions.
John has been involved with the design and implementation of the Personal Property Securities Legislation (PPS) with the Attorney General's Department and Senate Inquiries and is now advising clients on the impact of the PPS on their business and products.
John is listed as a leading individual in the area of General Bank Lending by Chambers Global Guide 2009 and is also recommended in the areas of Banking & Finance: Asset Finance & Leasing, Property Finance, Corporate Finance and Asset Finance.
John is also recommended as a leading individual in the area of Aviation by Legal Media Group's Guide to the World's Leading Aviation Lawyers 2008 and The International Who's Who of Aviation Lawyers.
In Chambers Global Guide 2009 John was described by peers as "a brilliant lawyer who is both clever and commercial in his approach".
Bruce Whittaker
Partner
Ashurst
Bruce is a partner in the finance practice at Ashurst.
Bruce heads Ashurst's PPS practice in Australia. He was closely involved in the development of the PPS legislative package, and participated in submissions on successive drafts of the PPSA and associated legislation and regulations. He also appeared before a number of Senate inquiries into the PPS legislation. Bruce is an Editor and contributing author to the looseleaf and online service Personal Property Securities Law in Australia, published by LexisNexis, and is a PPS Specialist Editor of the Australian Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents. Bruce speaks regularly at seminars and industry conferences on the PPSA and its impact on Australian businesses.
A partner since 1990, Bruce's career has included a secondment with Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York in their project finance and capital markets sections, and with a leading independent law firm in Germany. Bruce holds a combined B.A. (Hons) and LL.B. (Hons) from the University of Melbourne.
Dipen Mitra General Manager Operations Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia (ITSA)
Dipen was appointed General Manager of Operations to head up ITSA's National Service Centre in July 2011. The National Service Centre (NSC) in Adelaide manages the PPS business and houses the contact centre.
Dipen has been with ITSA for 14 years and was previously the Assistant National Manager of ITSA's insolvency registry and has considerable experience in managing registry operations.
A CPA with experience in leading service delivery, his focus over the last few months has been to develop ITSA’s capability to manage and support clients transacting with the PPSR.
He will be talking about how the register is performing - some of the early trends and issues, how the PPS business is structured within ITSA and the role of the NSC is supporting clients
Del Cseti
National Training Manager & Manager External Affairs, Australian Institute of Credit Management (AICM)
Del has been a member of the AICM team since 2001. During that time she has developed and expanded AICM's qualification based programs and raised the AICM profile within government through her work in preparing over 20 submissions and appearing before Parliamentary Committees in relation to credit related legal reforms. Del is able to combine a sound knowledge of credit management together with a detailed understanding of the recent legislative changes. Del's qualifications include a Master of Legal Studies and Master of Education from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Prior to joining AICM Del held senior positions in the fields of education and industrial relations.
Del is the author of Understanding Personal Property Securities Law
Richard Calver National Director Industrial Relations
and Legal Counsel Master Builders Australia
Richard Calver has had over 30 years experience in the law, having conducted his own legal practice in the state of Victoria, Australia, taught law at the Faculty of Law Monash University, the RMIT University and the University of Canberra as well as having had roles in government and industry. He has had experience as a director of not for profit organisations as well as private and public companies.
In the early 1990s Richard established his own private practice and taught law at the Faculty of Law, at Monash University and the RMIT University. He lectured in taxation law and in industrial law, as well as tutoring in contract and tort law. He designed and taught the Master of Laws subject Commercial Alternative Dispute Resolution and was active as an arbitrator. In his practice, he did general commercial work with an emphasis on tax related disputes.
In the mid 1990s Richard returned to the industry association field as the Director, Industrial and Legal with the Victorian Farmers Federation and then, moving to Canberra in 1998, became the National Farmers Federation Industrial Relations Advocate and Policy Manager.
In 2002 he worked as Senior Adviser, Workplace Relations to a Cabinet Minister before joining Master Builders Australia as National Director Industrial Relations and Legal Counsel in March 2003.
From that time he has acted as the National Director Industrial Relations and Legal Counsel for Master Builders Australia where he specialises in employment law, construction contracts and undertakes general commercial work.
John Fisk
Partner, Corporate Restructuring
PricewaterhouseCoopers NZ
John Fisk is a Partner in PwC New Zealand with over 23 years experience providing business recovery services and advice on a broad range of insolvency, restructuring and monitoring assignments. He has been appointed receiver to numerous companies and is regularly appointed by the High Court as a liquidator. Financial institutions have regularly asked John to carry out business appraisals on borrowers where concerns have been raised about financial viability, available security or where additional funding has been requested.
For the past 14 years John has been the convenor of INSOL New Zealand in Wellington and is regularly consulted by NZICA and media to comment on insolvency issues.
John spent three years in London working on a variety of insolvency and investigation assignments. In 2010 he was appointed receiver to Pike River Coal Limited and has been appointed receiver to a number of high profile finance companies. John has gained a great deal of practical experience working with the Personal Property Securities Act 1999 since the act came into force in New Zealand in 2002.
Hooman Zahrai
Chairman, Institute of Factors and Discounters in Australia and New Zealand (IFD) ;
Senior Product Manager, Cash Flow Finance, Westpac Group
Hooman, a qualified Chartered Accountant, has over 30 years experience in accounting, banking and finance and previously held senior positions at Woolworths Limited, Australian Export Fund and Scottish Pacific Business Finance. He was an Executive Director of the Corporate Financial Services business at GE Capital for 7 years prior to joining the Westpac Group in 2009 to manage the Westpac Group’s cash flow finance suite of products which includes receivables financing. Hooman is the current Chairman of the IFD, the industry representative body for receivables financiers in Australia and New Zealand.
Hooman has been intimately involved in the Bank’s implementation of the requirements of the PPS legislation as it relates to receivables financing and will share his experience of how the industry may be impacted by the new legislation.
Moses Samaha
Head of Commercial Risk
Veda
Moses has more than 14 years' industry experience working across consumer and business market segments and has held executive positions in product development/marketing, strategy and sales. He currently heads up the Commercial Risk business at Veda, charged with accelerating growth back into that part of the market.
Prior to joining Veda, Moses was on the Executive Management Team at Telstra. In his most recent position as Director of Product Strategy & Operations, his team provided strategic and commercial support to Telstra's Innovation, Product & Marketing group. Before that, he led a team that was accountable for the product management and development of the largest part of Telstra's mobility product portfolio, valued at $4.7Bn. His team achieved a significant revenue growth turn-around in three years, a long list of Australian and world first new product innovations, and received numerous industry awards.
Moses holds an Executive MBA from the AGSM, an Honours Degree in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Sydney. Outside of business hours, Moses is a father of three children and enjoys outdoor activities.
Denise North
Chief Executive Officer
Insolvency Practitioners Association of Australia
Denise joined IPA as CEO in May 2008. Her executive career spans a range of organisation types and business sectors. In the Government sector, Denise worked as an industry analyst with the Australian Government and for two years as a policy advisor to the then Minister for Industry, Technology & Commerce, Senator John Button. She has co-founded and managed consulting and training companies and held senior executive positions, including as chief executive, in the community sector, in professional services firms and in major listed corporations in the telecommunications and financial services sectors.
Denise is also a non-executive director. She chairs the Council of International House at the University of Sydney and the Board of Streetwize Communications Limited. She is herself a regulator in her role as a Fisheries Commissioner with the Australian Fisheries Management Authority.
Denise holds a Bachelor of Economics (Honours) Degree from the University of Sydney and a Master of Business Administration from the Australian Graduate School of Management. She is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Australian Institute of Management, and a Member of the St James Ethics Centre.
David Brown
Associate Professor
The University of Adelaide
David Brown, MA (Oxon), is Co-Director of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Law Scholarship Unit (BILS) at Adelaide Law School. He has been at University of Adelaide since 2009. From July 2012 he will be Deputy Dean. He is a member of the Law Council’s Insolvency and Restructuring Committee. In addition to PPSA, he teaches corporate law, insolvency and corporate rescue, and has published books on Land Law, Corporate Rescue, and Insolvency. He has also taught insolvency in Canada and Germany.
He has taught PPSA in the Adelaide Law Masters programme, and spent four months in 2012 as Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto, researching PPSA. Previously an academic in England and New Zealand, and a qualified barrister in both, he has written and presented locally and internationally on PPSA, and advised on cases in New Zealand. In 2010 he co-hosted a PPSA conference in Adelaide, with the Law Society of South Australia. He has conducted nationwide training on PPSA for ASIC, the Insolvency Practitioners Association , and Insolvency and Trustee Service. David runs a PPSA column in the Insolvency Law Bulletin. He is co-author of forthcoming LexisNexis book, Duggan and Brown ‘Australian Personal Property Securities Law’, due November 2012.
Jacquie Browning
Special Counsel
Piper Alderman
Jacquie is a special counsel in the Banking and Finance team of Piper Alderman. She is based in the Melbourne office.
She acts for institutional, property development and agribusiness financiers and for borrowers in relation to the provision of business and development finance. She has worked on a number of medium to large financial projects including housing developments, land acquisition and development funding for residential, industrial, retirement villages and other commercial projects, as well as financing for agribusiness entrepreneurs in Victoria and Tasmania.
Jacquie was formerly an in-house lawyer with a big four bank. She has considerable experience in trust law as well as drafting and negotiating banking documentation from the perspective of the financier and the borrower and has been involved in a large number of significant property and commercial refinance related deals throughout Australia.
Jacquie is a member of the Executive Committee (Treasurer) of Victorian Women Lawyers Association.
Craig Morgan
Senior Manager
Ferrier Hodgson
Craig Morgan has over 10 years experience in the Restructuring and Insolvency industry, five of which were in the United Kingdom. Craig is a senior manager at Ferrier Hodgson based in its Melbourne office and has a broad range of experience across numerous industries including retail, professional services and manufacturing.
Craig has recently advised a variety of stakeholders in relation to the introduction of the PPSA legislation and how the legislation will impact them.
Melinda Gorman
Senior Manager
Ferrier Hodgson
Melinda Gorman is a Senior Manager of Ferrier Hodgson, who specialises in corporate advisory and insolvency. Melinda has broad range of experience in advisory, finance and insolvency roles, across a diverse range of industries both domestically and abroad.
Melinda's more recent assignments have involved the restructure of aged care facilities in Victoria, a strategic review of a nationwide consumer retail chain and the receivership of a nationwide portfolio of industrial properties
Stewart McCallum Partner
Ferrier Hodgson
Stewart McCallum is a Partner of Ferrier Hodgson, who specialises in corporate insolvency and restructuring. Stewart is based in Melbourne, but has undertaken engagements in Asia, South America, the United Kingdom and Europe.
Stewart's recent appointments include the receivership of a nationwide consumer electronics retailer, and in that role he has had firsthand experience of the implications and practical issues of enforcing under the PPSA, including in relation to Retention of Title and other transitional issues.
Over the past twelve months Stewart has conducted numerous PPSA training sessions for banks, accounting and legal firms.
Steve Flynn Special Counsel
Simpson Grierson NZ
Steve Flynn is a Special Counsel, practising in the areas of banking and finance, and corporate insolvency, in the Wellington office of Simpson Grierson, and is an Honorary Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Victoria University of Wellington (and for the last twelve years has lectured on PPSA as part of the Faculty's undergraduate Banking Law and Commercial Law papers). He was a member of the New Zealand Law Society Sub-committee established in 1998 to review New Zealand's Personal Property Securities Bill, and co-authored and co-presented the Society's introductory booklet and national "roadshow" on PPSA. Steve has regularly published articles, and given presentations (including in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Singapore), on securities (including PPSA) and corporate insolvency topics.
Tony Coburn Director
PPS Solutions
Tony Coburn is a director of PPS Solutions Pty Ltd (PPS Solutions), a company established in late 2010 as a provider of services to business, and especially SMEs, for design and implementation of practical solutions to challenges arising under the Personal Property Securities Act 2009. A business can outsource its PPSA needs to PPS Solutions, or it can engage PPS Solutions to enable it to take charge of its own PPSA activities.
Tony’s main background has been in commercial law, but for 3 and half years (1999 to 2003) he was a senior executive of a software solutions company supplying the financial services sector, and for most of that time he was based in Palo Alto, CA.
Tony is a well known banking regulatory lawyer, and:
• is a member of the Financial Services Subcommittee of the Law Council of Australia,
• has written and spoken regularly on PPSA topics over the past 2 or 3 years,
• is a co-author of the LexisNexis service “Personal Property Securities in Australia”.
Tony holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Auckland and a Master of Laws from the University of NSW. He is admitted as a legal practitioner in NZ and a number of other Australian States, and is currently practising law in Victoria.
Adam Hopkins Head of Credit Operations
GE Capital ANZ
Adam Hopkins has recently been appointed as the Head of Credit Operations for GE Capital. In this role, Adam’s responsibilities include managing the documentation and security perfection teams for secured financing transactions.
Prior to commencing this role, Adam was the Deputy General Counsel for GE Capital and lead GE Capital's PPS readiness project. In addition, Adam was responsible for managing the provision of legal services to a number of the GE Capital's Australian businesses including Custom Fleet, Equipment Finance, Hallmark Insurance and Pacific Premium Funding. His responsibilities included:
structuring, drafting, negotiating and closing transactions (including security perfection and related issues);
in-life portfolio management and recoveries; and
end of term processes and procedure.
Adam joined GE Capital in 2006 from Toyota Financial Services where he held the positions of National Corporate Counsel and for a brief period, as the Fleet Operations Manager.
Adam is a contributing author to LexisNexis, Personal Property Securities Law in Australia and a co-author of LexisNexis, Australian Encyclopaedia on Leasing and Hiring of Goods.
Cindy Bushell
Project Director, Business Enablement Australia Operations, ANZ
Cindy was appointed as the ANZ Programme Director for Project RoSE (Registration of Securities Enablement) in November 2009. She has been responsible for the implementation of the use of the Personal Property Securities Register for 16 Business Units within the Australia Division of ANZ. With 23 years of Project experience, Cindy has spent 14 of those years in Programme/Project Management roles, along with Project Office & Senior Management roles both within Finance and Information Technology organisations. She holds a Masters of Business Administration, Deakin University.
Lionel Meehan Senior Associate
Restructuring and Insolvency Ashurst
Lionel Meehan is a finance lawyer specialising in restructuring, insolvency, special situations, distressed investment and banking law at Ashurst Australia.
Lionel's recent experience has focused upon distressed investing, debt trading and special situations in the commercial real estate sector, and administrations and receiverships in the retail, oil and gas and transport industries.
Lionel has a keen interest in the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (PPSA) and has presented and published regularly on various PPSA topics with particular focus on priority and enforcement issues under the PPSA.
Alex Beck
Product Manager PPSR
Veda
Alex became the product manager for Veda's PPSR services in July 2011. He was responsible for leading Veda's go to market and software development teams in bringing Veda's PPSR services to implementation. Alex continues to manage the ongoing PPSR product roadmap.
Prior to joining Veda, Alex was a Development Manager at Avaya R&D. Over a five year period, Alex led an Australian R&D team that built Avaya's global video telephony solutions. Prior to that, Alex was a Chemical Engineer working in Australian and Japanese Steel operations and R&D.
Alex holds an Executive MBA from the AGSM, a Masters of Engineering and a Honours Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of NSW.
