While McGrathNicol has so far raised significant sums from offloading two of its more-valuable cattle properties, the dismantling of Great Southern's 45 managed investment schemes has produced only small returns by comparison.

The complex nature of the schemes' ownership and management structures, plus the fact that many projects were unviable when the group went into administration last April, has hampered any real prospects of financial recovery.

That has applied not only to Great Southern's banking syndicate but also to its 43,000 investor growers who owned or continue to own a variety of fruit tree and timber-producing crops on land that was either controlled or leased by the group

Nearly all the viable schemes have now been disposed of, including its more-promising forestry and pulp-producing projects (to Gunns), almond-growing trees (to Great Southern's former funds management arm, Rural Funds Management), and some of its vineyards (to West-Australian investor Primary Securities).

But the rest - which were operated by a separate group subsidiary, Great Southern Managers Australia Limited (GSMAL) - have either been wound up or are in the process of being closed as the responsible entity is insolvent and has no money to run the schemes.

In addition, the poor financial prospects of the remaining projects meant there was no chance of finding a buyer prepared to shoulder the long-term costs - running into tens of millions of dollars - of trying to make them profitable.

McGrathNicol will now hand over the remaining responsible entity duties to the liquidators of Great Southern, Ferrier Hodgson, but the management division is effectively a shell in name only and will be wound up in due course.

Ferrier Hodgson has been trying to extract what remaining value there is in Great Southern for the group's other creditors, but the upper hand has always been held by its bankers, on whose behalf McGrathNicol has been working.