By Tom Winnifrith | Wednesday 31 January 2018
I have been sent the first report on Ariadne Capital Limited prepared by the Administrator Leonard Curtis and sent to creditors yesterday. They will be whistling and will not get a cent back. There is no cash, no sales pipeline and only one debt of £36,000 which the Administrator hopes to collect. His comments on related party debts of £4.6 million are "of note". A company that claimed net assets of £3,858,688 as at 31 December 2016 is set to report a deficiency of £6,762,604 according to Leonard Curtis. Actually it will be worse.
There are a stack of suppliers in Malta claiming that they are owed money and they are not yet on this list. But among those who will be left to whistle are HMRC (for almost half a million in unpaid payroll taxes), Barclays Bank, 13 employees, a raft of London law firms, 9 former employees and the list goes on and on.
The report shows (page 6) that the profits Ariadne boasted of in 2015 and 2016 were achieved by selling assets to other Meyer controlled companies. At a trading level Ariadne was heavily loss making. And those other Ariadne companies just did not pay up - they still owe more than £4.6 million. Will they pay up? Can they afford to pay up? Will the administrator go after them? The report suggests that he thinks he will not get a cent from them. I wonder why?
The administrator makes it clear that Ariadne was struggling for cash to pay its bills throughout 2017. It was - as she claimed - Ms Meyer who called in Leonard Curtis but at that point two creditors were pressing for a winding up order. Cash as at 31 October was exactly NIL. (page 7)
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