BDS folds after a year
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• A year-old freight company has collapsed with debts said to total £250,000 to about 70 creditors. Towerwood of Thorne, Yorkshire, trading as BDS International Freight Brokers, stopped offering loads in July.
Almost immediately an unrelated firm, Anglo Italian Freight, was set up by Brian Whybrow, a local businessman whose book-keeping company, Instant Accounting Services, was working for Towerwood.
He also had 10% of the £100 issued share capital of Towerwood, but was never a director.
Anglo Italian trades from offices next to those which were occupied by Towerwood, employs two of Towerwood's clerical staff and uses the same telephone number.
Whybrow says that there is no association between the two companies.
Towerwood was set up in August 1989 by two directors, Mirjana Aksentijevic and Leslie Hardy. Traffic manager Michael Heller was made a director, with 40% of the share capital, in January this year.
Instant Accounting, which has been trading for 10 years, invited liquidators in at Towerwood when it became clear that the forwarder was insolvent. Joint liquidators were confirmed as accountants from Kidsons Impey of Grimsby, and Stay Hayward of Nottingham. Stuart Land, insolvency manager at Kidsons, says Towerwood is showing assets of £119,000 but that almost all of that sum is in book debts. Two German firms are showed as owing 235,000, but even so Towerwood is "considerably adrift", he says.
Land expects creditors to get some of their money back. But the deficiency stands at £150,700, (60% of book assets) and several issues remain outstanding, including the theft of a consignment from a truck in Italy.
Land says that no auditor appears to have been appointed at Towerwood, which greatly concerns the trade creditors.
One of Towerwood's largest creditors has told CM that initial trade reports on the company were quite good and payments were made promptly for the first six months or so.