Court battles reveal warning signs years before Bathla’s $3.4b collapse | The Business | ABC NEWS
From the air, Bathla’s ambitions stretched as far as the eye could see. In 2021 a Bathla subsidiary struck a deal with landowner Michael Ryan to buy a vast parcel of land for almost $40 million.
But a series of court judgements shows, getting paid proved far from easy. Michael Ryan’s lawyer Penny Cable described it as “a ducking and weaving game”.
“It took a long time and cost the plaintiff a lot of money,” she said.
After a string of missed settlement dates, even a Supreme Court order couldn’t get the deal done. In the end, the seller, Mr Ryan, agreed to finance part of the purchase himself, effectively lending the buyer money to complete the sale.
“It was really awful to see that it wasn’t just my client, but then other people coming out to say ‘this is happening to me as well’,” Penny Cable said.
When Bathla presented the Supreme Court a conditional loan proposal in 2024, a judge described the evidence it could complete the purchase as “flimsy and unconvincing”. Yet the wider Bathla Group had previously reported billions of dollars in assets. In the 2025 financial year, the group reported a $62 million profit, but its operations used $150 million more cash than it had brought in.
Bathla entered administration in August, with around $3.4 billion dollars in debt. It blamed slowing sales, rising costs and falling confidence. Its administrators say investigations remain complex and ongoing. Bathla and co-founder Bhart Bhushan were contacted for comment.
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