“Looking for credibility, Acquire appointed Andrew Demetriou chairman of an advisory board in 2014”
oh my, the sad #irony of this statement
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Even if he was still CEO, he’d head to the opera anyway.
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Can you paste the article I would like to read it and its behind a paywall
here it is
Acquire Learning, linked to Andrew Demetriou, investigated over $25m in loans
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Acquire Learning Group managing director John Wall and former advisory board member Andrew Demetriou.
Acquire Learning Group managing director John Wall and former advisory board member Andrew Demetriou. Pat Scala
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by John Stensholt
A former high-flying vocation training company once chaired by Crown Resorts director and ex-AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou is being investigated for a possible breach of directors duties regarding $25 million worth of loans advanced to shareholders and a horse racing media business.
Current and former directors of Acquire Learning, which entered administration in May, are being investigated by administrator Cor Cordis. Acquire has debts of about $92 million, including News Corporation being owed $7.2 million, the Australian Tax Office $6.1 million and AFL club Carlton owed about $1.9 million.
The administrator, who will report to creditors at a meeting in Melbourne on Tuesday morning, is investigating $10.85 million in loans advanced to horse racing digital media business G1X between May 2015 and June 2016.
Acquire Learning founder John Wall, who established the business with former Young Rich list members Tim Demetriou, Jesse Sahely and Damien Dau, is now the sole owner of G1X.
The horse racing business was at first a wholly owned subsidiary of Acquire Learning but its ownership was transferred to Mr Wall, a long-time racing enthusiast, on July 1, 2016. Acquire had advanced G1X loans totalling about $8.5 million during the 2016 financial year, according to a creditors report obtained by The Australian Financial Review, when it still owned the business.
Further loans
But Acquire also advanced G1X, which made a loss of $7.7 million in 2016 and is set to be sold to an employee for $110,000, further loans of $2.3 million after its sale to Mr Wall, which is the subject of the administrators’ investigation.
“This may be considered to be an unreasonable director-related transaction, noting that [Acquire Learning] no longer had any economic interest in G1X, and in circumstances where the shares in G1X were transferred for nil consideration, it would have been difficult to establish the likely recoverability for the funds advanced,” the creditors report states.
Acquire also paid its shareholders $28 million since 2014, about $14 million of which is still outstanding and subject to investigation.
“We’re continuing to investigate the affairs of the Acquire Learning Group, including substantial related-party transactions that occurred prior to our appointment,” administrator Barry Wight said.
Andrew Demetriou, the uncle of Tim Demetriou, was never a director of Acquire, but was chairman of the company’s advisory board between February 2014 and June 2016. Mr Demetriou was overseas and unavailable for comment. He was loaned about $1.7 million in 2014 to buy shares in the privately owned Acquire, a sum that was later paid out by way of a discretionary bonus. He is listed as having loans of $311,150 outstanding and as a creditor is owed $284,083.
“We have good advice from our end, and we are confident we are okay with it,” Mr Wall told The Australian Financial Review. “That is the G1X loan and the shareholder loans.”
‘Legislated out of business’
“We got advice about those loans from the top wealth-management firms in the country. We paid good money for that advice and it is only at times like this you have that advice tested. But we think we will be okay.”
Acquire had been a high-flying company in the education sector, making big profits from sharing the fee that the federal government paid learning providers to educate students, who were mostly taking out loans through VET FEE HELP scheme.
But it struck trouble last year when the government pulled the VET FEE funding, leading to Acquire sacking more than 100 staff and downsizing its operations.
It entered administration and was hit with a $4.5 million fine in May by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission after being found to have taken advantage of vulnerable students.
“We were legislated out of business,” Mr Wall said. “We are deeply regretful of what happened and the money owed to creditors.”
Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/policy/education/acquire-learning-linked-to-andrew-demetriou-investigated-over-25m-in-loans-20170924-gynzfi#ixzz4tq1O0Rzr
Follow us: @FinancialReview on Twitter | financialreview on Facebook
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Andrew should get Liz Lukin for some freelance help out of another mess he helped make.
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Seems like this thing was just a vacuum cleaner for government money which they then redistributed amongst themselves and other businesses while leaving a bunch of vulnerable people holding the can.
What an absolute bunch of scum bags. I hope someone funds the liquidator sufficiently to go after the lot of them.
I wonder if Vlad exercised enough control to be classed as shadow director?
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I was head hunted by a recruiter about 5 years ago for a senior legal role with an education company. I did an interview with the recruiter and was offered the job (it was a lot of money, like a LOT).
I was then told the company was Acquire. I pulled out and told them I wasn’t interested. Even the must cursory research 5 years ago told me that they were a bunch of crooks.
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Tim Demetriou
One of the richest young entrepreneurs of Australia
Tim Demetriou is the Global Head of Operations and a founding member of Acquire Learning. He was featured in the 27th place in the 2016 edition of the BRW Young Rich list, featuring the wealthiest young Australians, with a fortune of 84 million dollars.
The company started with placing prospective students into vocation education, but now also offers course delivery services and helps job seekers find employment. It also owns a stake in job classifieds business CareerOne and its shareholders have invested in horse racing digital media business G1X and digital sports radio network EON. He is managing all sales processes, recruitment, team building and student acquisition for the business across both its Australian and UK teams.
With 7 years experience in the education and training game, Tim holds a Bachelor of Business from La Trobe University and has a proven track record in business development. He is passionate about his work and in 2014 he had enjoyed the challenge of introducing Acquire Learning to a global platform.
He loves all things horse racing and dreams of racing the next Black Caviar. When he’s not working he keeps himself busy with a keen interest in fitness, and enjoying good food and wine with friends.
According to Tim, the key ingredients to Acquire’s success are “hiring the right people, finding the right providers, always doing the right thing by our customers and most importantly celebrating success.”
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This is a dodgy bit.
Vlad was never a Director or shareholder but was essentially gifted $1.7m for sitting on his fat a#rse on “the company’s advisory board”. So essentially he chaired some sort of board that provided advice to his son, that advice now likely the subject of investigation into alleged breaches of directors duties, and of course, governance failings to the tune of millions and millions of dollars.
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The process of providing a loan for vlad to buy shares and then writing it off against a ‘bonus’ (for chairing an advisory committee) also means the company increased its share capital by effectively buying its own shares. This dilutes the value of the shares owned by other shareholders and the increased share capital is potentially misleading to creditors.
We can only hope that vlad & some of his fellow crooks sold their shares prior to liquidation based on privileged information so that vlad really does get to experience the inside of a prison cell.
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Just out of curiousity places like the above. Are they just solely set up to get people into learning or equivalent . As soon as they sign up do they get x amoumt of money from the government with no obligation for the person/s signed up to actually finish graduate from the courses provided?
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Yes exactly
As of this year, the VET fee help system has been substantially transformed into a student loan system comparable to HECS for tertiary education, accompanied by conditions attached to the initial grant of loans ( e.g educational eligibility for a course) . Some courses are subsidised at mostly State level ( e.g aged care). There are additional conditions attached to registration and evaluation of the registered training bodies , as well as a ban on inducements to sign up .
As Wall of Acquire said, he was legislated out of the business. .
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Thank you for the replies.
Here we go again…
So Dank going to Supreme Court to overturn his lifetime ban?
What does this mean?
Faaark me
Players and club can be called in to testify.
Faaark you Barrett , go eat a farking fat one
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Yawn.
Nice to know he could have helped us when we needed. Means diddly squat now the snake