Leighton Associates

Employment law, insolvency and AML research and reporting
Te Rangahau ture Mahi me te tari Purongo
Demystifying employment law since 2019
 

New rules announced this week will tax outstanding shareholder loans as income six months after a company is removed from the Companies Register. If you are a director, shareholder, or adviser - or if you have a company in financial difficulty - this change matters to you. Data from 31 March 2024 reveals the scale of the shareholder loan problem that Budget 2026 seeks to address. Budget 2026 — Key Facts at a Glance Trigger: Company liquidated or removed from the Compani

In an otherwise mundane determination of the Employment Relations Authority, that found the director of a failed company liable for unpaid wages (around $8,400, plus $800 costs), our interest was piqued because of the liquidation company’s chequered history. SINGH v VEHICLE DIRECT LIMITED (IN LIQUIDATION) and Anor | Employment Relations Authority With liquidations currently at a 15 year high, we have noticed an increase in claims under Section 142W of the Employment Relations

As media coverage of handsy software magnate Sir Rod Drury’s troubles continues, an Auckland barrister has managed to sum up, in one short paragraph, the ease of which a document writing shortcut can prevent a dumpster fire: Whistleblower was assured of confidentiality, but her name was revealed to Sir Rod Drury | Stuff (23 May 2026) Naylor’s lawyer Michael Timmins said while mistakes do happen, “it's very simple when you're providing sensitive material to just do a ‘ctrl F’

A strange "dismissal" claim was heard by the Fair Work Commission in Melbourne. The decision was all of one page, which is plenty. A screenshot of [2026] FWC 1655 appears below, and unusually, we don't have anything to add.

Company liquidations remain elevated in 2026, with the IRD continuing a firm enforcement approach. Practitioners regularly encounter files featuring provable tax debts alongside penal liabilities such as court-imposed fines and reparation orders, which sit outside the normal insolvency distribution framework. When these penal elements surface, a structural tension is exposed – one that Parliament has long recognised and chosen not to fix. The Legal Framework S 303(1) of the C

Stories of employees getting ambushed and stitched up in employment mediations are nothing new to us, in fact Leighton Associates was born of a couple of such stitch-ups and subsequent enforcement action (Tauranga City Council v Brown aka ALA v ITE, Victoria University of Wellington v Sawyer, both 2017), and kept busy by several since. Today we have been treated to the spectacle of a glorious desecration of an employment NDA (non-disclosure agreement), that was executed in 20