Creditors of collapsed Garenne Group told there is no money
CREDITORS in the failed companies of the collapsed Garenne Group are unlikely to get any money back through the liquidators, they were told yesterday in a series of meetings.
The attendance for the final of four meetings, for Hurel Ltd, what remains of former leading building company RG Falla, had as many creditors present as the remainder of the morning meetings combined, but very little in the way of good news was forthcoming.
With questions, largely dominated by a handful of tradesmen who are owed money, the meeting lasted almost exactly an hour, but many questions and doubts remained unanswered at its conclusion.
‘At the moment there is no money, there are no realisations in this company.
‘There is no money in the bank and no assets that we can put our hands on,’ said Geoff Jacobs, managing director of joint liquidator Interpath Advisory, which is working with a local team from KPMG.
Mr Jacobs warned creditors that if any prospect of realising monies became apparent, the liquidators might need to get confirmation from the creditors that they would be prepared to fund the pursuit of it.
At present, although the liquidators will wind up the business and potentially receive no fees, they said that if there were no obvious prospects of receiving monies, they would not pursue every potential opportunity if significant costs would be involved.
The liquidators advised creditors that they were far from getting to the bottom of the arrangement that had led to the emergence of RG Falla Construction Ltd, taking all staff and, it is understood, most of the contracts and assets of RG Falla, and the historic firm’s rebranding as Hurel Ltd as a dormant company no longer trading.
They will be reviewing the process of that sale and the detail of the sale agreement.
They did reveal, though, that banking arrangements across the group were pooled into a single bank account.
When a performance bond, a surety often issued by a bank to guarantee satisfactory completion of a project by a contractor, was called in, which triggered the collapse of Camerons, the Jersey-based building contractor which was part of Garenne Group, it took the whole group down.
As RG Falla, Hurel had ‘contractual challenges’, said the liquidators, with certain contracts under-performing which caused significant cash flow issues.
Many contractors and suppliers present at the meeting have lost thousands of pounds.
Some were confused to have allegedly received apparent instructions or orders which they understood to come from RG Falla, around or even after the date when the company became Hurel. That will be investigated.
And the liquidators said that they understood that there were customer monies still owed on RG Falla contracts – but they would not know if Hurel was in line to receive them.
A statement of affairs has not been prepared by Hurel’s former directors, and the liquidators added that the company's financial systems appeared to have been merged with the purchaser’s, and so creditor balances were not available.
