540 companies, $400k missed rent, and a former Labor minister’s intervention: The final days of collapsed developer

Former NSW Labor planning minister Frank Sartor was engaged to provide planning advice to developer Bathla weeks before the company entered voluntary administration, owing more than $3 billion and threatening the delivery of thousands of homes.

Documents filed on Wednesday with the corporate regulator, and first reported by The Australian , show Sartor contacted corporate restructuring agency Teneo on behalf of Bathla Group to “assist with the development of a strategic communication strategy” on August 7.

Two weeks later, Bathla’s legal advisers requested Teneo commence contingency planning for a potential voluntary administration of the major Sydney developer. On Tuesday, 18 days later, Bathla and its hundreds of related entities entered voluntary administration , with Teneo appointed to oversee the company.

Sartor was a major player in NSW Labor in the late 1990s and early 2000s, serving 12 years as lord mayor of the City of Sydney before entering NSW parliament in 2003 and working as planning minister from 2005 to 2008.

Sartor told the H erald on Thursday that he had only been engaged to assist Bathla since the start of the month and was “not totally surprised” when he got the call this week that the company had entered voluntary administration, saying it was probably the right thing to do.

“They [Bathla] mean to do the right thing, they just made the mistake of overextending,” he said. “Teneo is very competent and I’m sure they’ll find them a pathway to restoration.”

Sartor said with so much housing at stake “it would be a pity” if the company couldn’t be saved.

The revelation comes a day after NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns described Bathla’s collapse as a “serious issue”. “We understand that developer was significantly through a range of developments in western Sydney, so we have to think creatively about who is going to step in and complete the projects,” he told a press conference on Wednesday afternoon. “It’s not going to be easy.”

“Obviously, we will talk with the [company’s administrators] and there is also a role to play to ensure that other large-scale volume builders don’t fall into the same problem.”