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Please can you send an email


andrewcooley

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Please can you send an email to Laura Sibun (Laura.Sibun@begbies-traynor.com). She's an administrator with Begbies-Traynor, the liquidators for Ownerships Ltd.

 

Please can you ask her to get the details of a client account from Barclays Bank in time for a meeting of the liquidation committee next Thursday 26th April.

 

The account is the Ownerships Clients Number Two Account, held by Barclays Bank, High Street, Coventry, sort code 20-23-55 a/c number 40022454 and the bank is happy to release the details to the liquidators - they have a standard procedure for doing so.

 

The reason is that these details could prove exactly who owns the boat shares that were 'bought back' by an Ownerships scheme. The scheme involved owners making contributions to this fund in exchange for reduced management costs, and the fund was used to buy back shares when syndicate members wanted to move on. The liquidators have consistently denied the existence of this account until I tracked it down last week. I've spoken to the account manager, who is happy to release the details to the liquidators - but obviously won't release them to me as an individual.

 

Because the liquidators did not believe this account existed, they claimed that they owned these shares, asked syndicates (who are also creditors) to pay £1,000 for each of them (there were 42!) and even threatened to get a court order to seize the whole boats, sell them, deduct their fees and costs and hand back any change!

 

The details of this account could prove conclusively that the shares belonged collectively to the contributing owners and are not assets to which the liquidators have any title. This would mean that the costs incurred by the syndicates could be set against any value, so that the shares would now belong to the syndicates with no outstanding threat or claim against them. It could bring two years of hassle and worry to a permanent end.

 

So please do help if you can by emailing Laura Sibun and asking her to get the details from the bank. It really doesn't matter if you have nothing to do with Ownerships Ltd. - it's simply a matter of helping to get the facts out in the open.

 

Thanks for your help.

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So please do help if you can by emailing Laura Sibun and asking her to get the details from the bank. It really doesn't matter if you have nothing to do with Ownerships Ltd. - it's simply a matter of helping to get the facts out in the open.

 

 

 

I would have thought, a request from all the owners involved in BCBM to Barclays Bank is all that's needed.

 

CWDF members, per se, whilst interested in the outcome, cannot and should not, interfere in the legal/administrative proceedings.

 

Should the administrators not comply with information given, or received, surely would leave themselves open to legal proceedings from you (BCMB/Ownership owners) :rolleyes:

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I would have thought, a request from all the owners involved in BCBM to Barclays Bank is all that's needed.

 

CWDF members, per se, whilst interested in the outcome, cannot and should not, interfere in the legal/administrative proceedings.

 

Should the administrators not comply with information given, or received, surely would leave themselves open to legal proceedings from you (BCMB/Ownership owners) :rolleyes:

 

No, a request from individuals - even as a group - won't do. The Ownerships agreement says that, in the event of liquidation, the company will make the account details available to contributing owners, but 'the company' now no longer exists except in the form of the liquidators.

 

They should have discovered this account nearly 12 months ago, failed to do so and then acted on the basis that it didn't exist. It should not have been down to owners to do the research to actually find it. It is the liquidators who had the many boxes of documents.

 

So please do email. It is not interfering - simply asking the liquidators to obtain some information so that the liquidation committee can make an informed decision.

 

The owners are not in a position to mount a legal action and, of course, it affects many syndicates who are not involved in any way with BCBM. The worst affected that I know about has 4 of these shares, so the boat has been running with only 8 owners paying all the costs for about two years now. If we can't get the liquidators to obtain this information by 26th, it could be another 6 months before the matter can be resolved.

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Because the liquidators did not believe this account existed, they claimed that they owned these shares, asked syndicates (who are also creditors) to pay £1,000 for each of them (there were 42!) and even threatened to get a court order to seize the whole boats, sell them, deduct their fees and costs and hand back any change!

 

 

Slightly off topic, but quite worrisome that a liquidator could do this - and for this reason, I'd like to question if they can at all. Surely, if they came into possession of a share, (lets say for example 1/12 share, but it might be 1/6 or 1/4 etc etc if they had more than one on a boat), they have the same powers as every other 1/12 shareholder. They'd get a vote at the boats AGM, but that's about it. And no individual shareholder acting alone can 'force' the sale of a boat. Also they'd be liable for their share of the maintenance costs, and if that weren't forthcoming then a reasonable scenario might be that their share diminishes and the other shareholders (who would have to stump up the extra maintenance money or forego any required work on the boat, ie let the maintenance required/fault persist) would have their share increased, until they settled their 'debt' too.

 

Also they'd not simply be able to do 'anything' with their 1/12 share, for example they'd not be able to hire it out - they'd need to comply with the rules of that share, which means its a non-hire licenced boat and only the named people who own that share can use/drive the boat.

 

The worst they'd be able to do is have a week's free holiday 4 times a year, so it appears?

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... but quite worrisome that a liquidator could do this ...

 

 

It has been a long struggle and we've continually been up against the argument that insolvency law overrides everything else. Essentially the liquidators' solicitor has said that the client funds and the trading account were intermingled so the fact that shares were bought back using a fund made up of owners' contributions is irrelevant. That's why tracking down and getting details of this client account are so important.

 

In fact the liquidators had just given up their attempt to extract money from the remaining syndicate members to pay their fees and their soliitor's latest advice was to 'disclaim' the shares. This would mean that they took no further action and the shares became vested in the crown. It would also mean that syndicates could effectively do what they liked with them - but it would not actually amount to a formal acceptance that the liquidators did not have title. If this client account shows what I hope it will, the liquidators may have no option but to admit that they don't have title. That would be a much better outcome for syndicates.

 

There is a lot of discussion about this - and links to the extensive correspondence - on the ex-Ownerships forum, starting here. It goes on a bit, though! It's now nearly two years since Ownerships stopped trading.

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