Back in business following failure
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• A former director of the failed Finney Bros Haulage has been granted a new national licence for 12 vehicles and trailers by North Western Licensing Authority Martin Albu.
Thomas Whalley admitted that although Whalley Road Services had been granted interim authority to operate, there was a time when it had operated without a licence. He said that he had sold Finney Bros haulage in July 1989 and by the time the company went into receivership, he had ceased to be a director.
The assets were bought by the company's accountant who formed Finney Brothers. He was told that a new Operator's Licence had been applied for, and he assisted as an unpaid transport manager. His wife became a director although she had no financial interest and was not engaged in the running of the company.
Finney Bros got into difficulty and was closed down. A number of employees approached him to see if he could keep the business running. An Operator's Licence was applied for in July 1991, but that application went astray. He requested an interim licence and was told to re-advertise and one could be granted after three weeks, so he assumed it had been granted three weeks later.
Whalley said that the new company was profitable. He now realised that he should have declared on the application form that his wife was a director of a company that went into liquidation; he had sold Finney Bros due to ill health, not financial reasons.
Granting the licence, Albu said that despite Whalley's apparent difficulties over the past couple of years, he accepted he had run his business competently in the past.
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