More Brisconnections train wreckage!

I really love following the BrisConnections debacle. It makes Opes Prime, Storm, and all that sort of stuff look pretty dull in comparision.This week, the Victorian Supreme Court gave its reasons for its ruling on the BrisCon case, and whilst bucketing the BrisCon people, did not say anything nice about Nick Bolton.Well, he is a cyclist, so why should they?More court action has been going on in Queensland as well, and the MacQuarie Bank was hoping to salvage something through a deal which would see retail investors saved from the $2 per share liability. This fell through due to their co-underwriter, Deustche Bank, refusing to come to the party. Obviously, the legal position which is starting to emerge is one where the BrisCon prospectus and other related information failed to adequately inform retail investors as to what their potential liabilities are. Which means, with ASIC and others starting to line up for legal action, that those liabilities could very well get thrown out of court. I sure hope so.BrisCon has now, belatedly, been suspended from trading on the ASX, and the ASX has changed its trading rules so as to protect retail investors better in future from incurring such liabilities.But why so late to act? I think that amongst the various conflicts of interest, BrisCon's chairman Trevor Rowe's position on the ASX board of directors now no longer looks tenable, and he should do the honourable thing and resign from the ASX board.Another interesting development is that Nick Bolton's legal team has indicated that some of the evidence provided by the Mac Bank in their Queensland court case is material which was not disclosed in the float prospectus. Bolton's team is considering using these revelations as the basis for further litigation against the Mac Bank.I hope that happens. I think that the Mac Bank has to wear a lot of the blame for the whole debacle, particularly in the short sighted way they caused the share price to collapse by dumping their holding on the market when they realised belatedly that they were onto a lemon.Which leads me to an interesting aside about the MacQuarie Bank. They underwrote this float, and set up the whole structure of the deal and the company. Could they not have foreseen when they set it up last year that there were all sorts of things which might and could go horribly wrong, and which would cost them big time? After all, unlike me, the MacQuarie Bank pays huge salaries to a lot of economic and financial wizards who should be able to understand these things and forecast market conditions a lot better than any old retail investor.That the Macquarie Bank has failed so miserably in this particular instance seriously casts doubt on the competance of their people and their whole operation. I suspect this is their defining Babcock and Brown moment.