The following news stories and legal cases may be of interest to you. If there are other current items you want to bring to our attention, please send an e-mail (and link) to news@insolvency.biz.
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Headline (and link) |
Story |
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7 Nov |
Donna McKenzie Skene and Adrian Walters look at comsumer bankruptcy law reform. |
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22 Sep |
At least 30 chefs are owed thousands of pounds. E&Y are administrators of the London & Edinburgh leasehold (pub and hotel) chain. Oxford Inns has paid £1m to buy fixtures for their 240 units from E&Y. |
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20 Sep |
RBS has agreed an undisclosed settlement with Bannerman Johnston Maclay over auditors liability when a bank rely on audited accounts. |
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12 Sep |
Three years on from receivership the pension fund is still smarting. |
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31 Aug |
French company Heller refused to hand over moulds and Grant Thornton confirmed 31 jobs were lost. |
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16 Aug |
The official version of events when IPs visited Kilwinning. |
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14 Aug |
The maker of the Highland Toffee Bar and Pan Drops has closed down. Graham Marin of PWC has laid off all 149 staff. |
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8 Aug |
After 18 months trading in receivership, Grant Thornton has made all 25 XS staff redundant. |
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5 Aug |
The Guardian looks at whether people are being encouraged to default |
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3 Aug |
Half of company directors could become personally liable for their company's debts and risk personal bankruptcy in the event of insolvency - due to ignorance of basic company law |
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1 Aug |
HSBC's chief executive Michael Geoghegan has blamed the rapidly growing personal insolvency industry for the rising levels of bad debts. |
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15 Jul |
E&Y have been appointed receivers of the Livingston printers. 220 jobs are at risk. |
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12 Jul |
APC employed 550 and went into receivership in 1998. Director Elizabeth Clow was convicted of faking accounts. |
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29 Jun |
One in five trust deeds are now with Invocas |
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15 Jun |
Debt oblivion looms for many |
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12 Jun |
The new Scottish president aims to end male dominance of the insolvency profession |
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11 Jun |
The daughter of crime lord Arthur Thompson has taken control of his £10m fortune. |
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7 Jun |
The Edinburgh insolvency practice turning over £219,000, and with profits of £133,000 before proprietors remuneration, has been sold to Invocas for £140,000. |
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6 Jun |
Inzani v HMRC was an appeal by the director against a s121C Social Security Act 1992 personal liability notice, but the director was found to have been sufficiently negligent to be personally liable for the company’s NICs. |
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6 Jun |
Alan McCombes, SSP policy co-ordinator, said he was facing a personal bill of around £25,000 after expenses were awarded against him and he was fined £500 for a "blatant and deliberate" contempt of court. |
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6 Jun |
John Hall will be answering the ‘phone a lot, he hopes, as his call centre goes live. |
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31 May |
Scotland's "pig king" who co-founded Scotpigs before going bust, is acting as agent for his son Charles, to build accommodation for 700 animals at Whiterashes. |
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25 May |
Donald Gorrie wants bank managers who lend irresponsibly to get ASBOs and be forced to dig debtors’ gardens. But Is it LibDem policy? |
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24 May |
The bill made a token appearance in parliament, and the usual suspects took part. The link takes you to the official report of proceedings. In his closing remarks, however, the Deputy Minister Allan Wilson commented “I accept ... that the debt arrangement scheme should include ...debt relief..[and]..the greatest need is for interest freezing at the start of a debt payment programme. |
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24 May |
Fife Today has reported that receivers have been called in to Forthway, and 40 jobs are at risk. |
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23 May |
Of 1,366 people interviewed by YouGov 13% said they were quite likely, or even certain, to declare themselves bankrupt in the near future. That equates with one million people across Britain. |
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19 May |
Rosyth-based DEW Pitchmastic announced on Wednesday that it had gone bust, prompting employees to down tools and walk away from the Kirkcaldy site. |
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18 May |
Bruce Cartwright, the Convener of the Insolvency committee at ICAS and a partner with PWC, said: “We are delighted that MSPs have listened to the arguments presented by ICAS. |
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17 MAY |
Bankrupt Paisley “mortgage expert” Stewart Kennedy, still living the high life according to the Evening Times, has been reported to the Fiscal over “alleged financial irregularities” |
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17 May |
The Enterprise and Culture Committee has published its Stage 1 report on the Bankruptcy and Diligence etc. (Scotland) Bill. |
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15 May |
TKim Wilson has moved from KPMG, and Derek Simpson has been promoted to associate. |
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13 May |
SNP MSP Fergus Ewing says the parliament has less than three months left in which to sue construction managers Bovis over their choice of off-the-shelf company Flour City Architectural Metals UK for a £7m contract to clad the MSP block. |
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11 May |
Tackle creditors yourself, seek out free debt advise, opt for an IVA and/or sell up. |
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10 May |
KPMG’s Blair Nimmo said some creditors had made allegations against the company's activities, which are being looked into. |
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9 May |
Statistics, in the 60 th edition of ‘ Impecunias ’, the ICAS newsletter for the insolvency profession, confirm that three times as many Scots are going bacnkrupt in 2006 than in 1990. |
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8 May |
120 workers lose their jobs as receiver Kenny Craig of Tenon decides the business cannot be saved. |
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7 May |
Peter Luff MP, chairman of the backbench Trade and Industry Select Committee says insolvency practitioners and debt counsellors should be obliged to offer clients the 'best advice' for their circumstances, regardless of what it makes for the adviser. |
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6 May |
Fewer Scottish firms went into liquidation in the first three months of 2006, but a 37% surge in the number of people going bankrupt could hit businesses hard reports the P&J. |
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5 May |
The proposals involve accrediting debt management advisers working in an industry that has seen growth due to rising levels of debt among individuals. |
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3 May |
The £9m of ordinary creditors of the Blantyre based heating and ventilation contractor will not receive a penny. |
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3 May |
52-year-old Mansfield woman Pauline Evans was sacked in 1997, but nine years on she is still fighting to receive her £38,000 compensation award. Refused legal aid, she is pursuing the nursing home where she worked. But it keeps changing hands leaving her mortgaging her house to continue the fight for her money. |
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3 May |
R3 president Ron Robinson said of the new TUPE regualtions: “This is undoubtedly the worst piece of insolvency related legislation to come out of this Government, and the level of incompetence and complacency in dealing with employees rights is, quite frankly, staggering." |
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30 Apr |
Mark Sands, the head of personal insolvency at KPMG, said: "Bankruptcy is becoming a lifestyle option for many people to escape their debts... spread by word of mouth and television advertising from bankruptcy advisers." |
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30 Apr |
Royal Mail directors are threatening to resign unless Gordon Brown approves a £1.5bn restructuring plan. The Telegraph says it is near insolvency, with a £4bn pension deficit. |
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29 Apr |
Residents in Inverness are complaining about the noise of their neighbours making love through the thin walls. A spokesman for the builder’s liquidator said the walls wouldn’t be so thin if people didn’t make love through them in the first place... |
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28 Apr |
Up to 300 occupational schemes are at risk of collapse and need to be monitored closely, the Pensions Regulator has said. |
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24 Apr |
Deputy minister for enterprise and lifelong learning Allan Wilson met with the great and the good of the Insolvency Profession to discuss areas of concern - particularly trust deed reform. |
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23 Apr |
Window cleaners face bankruptcy as hose pipe bans are introduced, warns the FSB. |
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21 Apr |
The football club are again facing a financial crisis. |
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21 Apr |
The average Scot has non-mortgage debts of £7,417 - 25 per cent more than the average Briton and almost a third of their annual income, according to Alliance & Leicester bank. |
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21 Apr |
Stirling Park on aspirational lifestyles. |
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16 Apr |
The Insolvency Practices Council is warning about rogue IPs. |
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16 Apr |
Light at the end of the tunnel, or is it a train coming? Saving firms that are gasping for their last breath. |
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13 Apr |
R3 President Tony Supperstone talks to turnaround specialist Mark Palios for Accountancy Age.. |
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13 Apr |
BBC’s Moneybox on how IVAs can make things worse for debtors. |
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13 Apr |
Mr Justice Tomlinson attacked both the case, and the courtroom behaviour of Deloitte's leading counsel Gordon Pollock QC. |
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12 Apr |
The Motley Fool sums up why not to invest in debt management companies. |
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11 Apr |
Calum Watt, of WMI features in the Daily record. |
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6 apr |
The Loanhead construction company is in receivership and KPMG have laid off virtually all the 376 staff. |
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6 Apr |
Where a transferor is in ‘relevant insolvency proceedings’, certain employee debts will not pass to the transferee. |
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4 Apr |
It now costs £450 to make yourself bankrupt South of the border, and many on low incomes cannot afford it. |
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30 Mar |
R3 president Ron Robinson has attacked the vague language of the new rules. |
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28 Mar |
R3 Scotland has hosted a lively debate on the proposals. |
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27 Mar |
Bryan Jackson insists the Bill is flawed. |
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23 Mar |
The 166-year-old leather tanners Pittards, described by finance director John Buckley as an "£80m pension scheme with a leather-making subsidiary", is taking out a company voluntary arrangement (CVA). |
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21 Mar |
Homless charity Shelter wants the debtor’s home excluded from sequestration. |
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20 Mar |
After 11 years at the helm of PKF Bryan Jackson will hand the reins to Edinburgh-based rising star Martin Gill on April 1. According to PKF, Jackson will now divert his attention to challenging the Scottish Executive over its controversial new Bankruptcy and Diligence Bill. |
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13 Mar |
After Margaret Curran forced a fast-track debate on the Bankruptcy Bill, Gillian Thomson has now had to accept she made a fundamental error in calculating the dividends in sequestrations. Come back, Mr Kerr, (almost) all is forgiven. |
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6 Mar |
Two employees - made redundant at 67 and 73 - are taking the DTI decision to refuse them redundancy payments to the House of Lords this week. Under new draft regulations, workers over 65 who lose their jobs other than by retirement will have the right to claim compensation for unfair dismissal or a redundancy payment. |
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1 Mar |
Twelve years on, and Dundee’s unpaid council tax is running at 3.2%, with £17m remaining uncollected. |
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28 Feb |
Rob Outram, editor of the CA magazine, argues that this is not the time to tinker with Trust Deed rules. |
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28 Feb |
The MSPs on Holyrood's Enterprise Committee proposed to finish their Stage 1 scrutiny of the Bankruptcy Bill's general principles by the end of June. But parliamentary business minister Margaret Curran said this was too long and MSPs agreed a compromise deadline - the middle of May - after a short debate in which some complained of not having enough time to do justice to their job of parliamentary scrutiny. |
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23 Feb |
Johnson Ventilation has emerged as the first significant corporate collapse triggered by the sudden failure of Blantyre-based ECG Group. |
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22 Feb |
Germany’s biggest cash transit company Heros has filed for bankruptcy. |
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21 Feb |
AIB CANCELS ABERDEEN MEETING |
The Accountant in Bankruptcy had something important to do, and at short notice cancelled her meeting with Aberdeen insolvency practitioners. |
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20 Feb |
The newly-named Invocas - formerly the business recovery and insolvency arm of Haines Watts - plans to list on AIM in the spring. It will break off from the business advisory and accountancy group to make its market debut. The firm will use the proceeds of the placing, expected to value it at around £30m, to develop a new helpline and website to grow its customer base and fund potential acquisitions. |
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20 Feb |
Bryan Jackson says "We've come from a culture where the wee Scots granny had a nest egg of savings to a 'live now, pay later' one”. |
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14 Feb |
KMPG figures show an 8% fall in liquidations last year. |
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13 Feb |
ICAS are making known their objections to the proposed minimum dividend level in protected trust deeds. |
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8 Feb |
Shetland Development Trust could lose as much as £500,000 from the collapse of Hoove Salmon and Papil Salmon. The assets of the two companies have now been sold to Scottish Sea Farms, receivers PriceWaterhouseCoopers announced today. |
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8 Feb |
Sci-fi enthusiast Tony Alleyne, who spent £30,000 on turning his flat into a star ship, and another £100,000 on marketing his space-age makeovers firm, has gone bust. |
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7 Feb |
Kingston University recommends a distinction between business and personal bankruptcy, and a closer look at the behaviour of lending institutions. Softening the impact of bankruptcy in non-culpable consumer debt cases by dropping the term, and a concerted education drive to underline the perils of life as a debtor are other ideas. |
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7 Feb |
One of Britain’s biggest debt management firms dealt with 600 IVAs last month, up from 260 the previous year. |
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6 Feb |
The Deputy Minister for Enterprise spouts the party line on the Bankruptcy bill. |
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6 Feb |
Matt Henderson has left Grant Thornton to join Johnston Carmichael, but continues to be based in Edinburgh. |
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4 Feb |
Rob Caven of Grant Thornton says there are 10 times as many people struggling with debt as the official figures suggest. |
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4 Feb |
Records numbers are going bust in an instant gratification culture. |
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3 Feb |
Blair Nimmo has cut over 200 jobs to try to save the heating and ventilation contractor, blaming the failure on “problematic contracts”. |
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2 Feb |
Bondholders in MyTravel and British Aviation have been given encouragement to challenge whether insolvent liquidation is the right comparator for CVAs. |
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2 Feb |
The Insolvency Service has been rapped by the Audit Office for serious shortcomings |
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31 Jan |
John Tribe of Kingston Law School has carried out a survey of 6 English Courts, and the over-indebtedness of consumer and entrepreneur debtors. |
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30 Jan |
£18m reported fraud just tip of the Scottish iceberg, according to KPMG’s fraud barometer. |
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26 Jan |
Six months on, and the directors of Granville Technology, the owners of the Time Computers PC brand, have not given administrators Grant Thornton a sworn statement of affairs. |
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20 Jan |
The AiB met with Insolvency Practitioners from all over Scotland - for four minutes - before dashing off to something important. Follow the link to a Minute of the meeting and the forthright views expressed in her absence.. |
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13 Jan |
Tartan Tanks have crashed into receivership with £100,000 of debt. Lord Aberdeen and Iain Adair’s off road driving venture based at Haddo was “too secluded”. Michael Reid of Meston Reid is receiver and has a Mk2 Chieftan Tank to sell. Don’t mess. |
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13 Jan |
The European Court of Justice has decided HMRC is not entitled to withhold VAT refunds because it suspects a carousel fraud by previous owners of the goods. |
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9 Jan |
Credit and store card debt in Scotland is one-third higher than in the rest of the UK. The average Scot owes nearly £8000 in unsecured borrowings and some banks are charging interest at rates of up to 69 per cent. |
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