Registrar-Generals-Department-Annual-report-1961-1962 — Page 45

Official Receiver in Bankruptcy Account

112. The receipts and payments for the year and the assets and liabilities as at 31st March 1962 are set out in Table XXXIV. Assets of bankrupt estates produced $687,643. Payments to preferential creditors and dividends to unsecured creditors amounted to $84,104 and $233,747 respectively, making a total of $317,851, and unclaimed funds and dividends amounting to $1,852 were transferred to the Bankruptcy Estates Account. At the end of the year $1,353,691 was held in respect of undistributed assets of bankrupt estates, and $340,656 in respect of unclaimed dividends, the latter being mainly due to the untraced creditors in the pre-war case mentioned in paragraph 105.

Companies Liquidation Account

113. The receipts and payments for the year and the assets and liabilities as at 31st March 1962 are set out in Table XXXV. More than half of the receipts and payments were in respect of the Peony House case, $420,225 being received and $438,323 paid out. Assets of other companies in compulsory liquidation produced only $24,794, and pay- ments to preferential creditors and dividends to unsecured creditors amounted to $8,408 and $55,102 respectively.

114. The substantial sum of $176,061 was received in respect of unclaimed dividends and returns of capital of companies in voluntary liquidation. These are sums due to creditors and shareholders who have not claimed the amounts due to them, and with whom the liquidators have presumably been unable to get into touch. Although there is no obligation on the Official Receiver's Office to take any steps to trace such creditors and shareholders, during the year it introduced the practice of sending to each creditor and shareholder at his last known address a notice of the receipt from the liquidator of the unclaimed sum. In a surprising number of cases this immediately resulted in the money being claimed, and a large part of the $71,234 paid to creditors and shareholders of companies in voluntary liquidation was due to the sending of these notices. $96,267 representing unclaimed balances held for over five years was transferred to general revenue. At the end of the year unclaimed dividends and returns of capital amounting to $654,865 in respect of voluntary liquidations and $27,973 in respect of compulsory liquidations were still held in the Companies Liquidation Account.

35