Chapter and Verse, Seymour Valentine In Administration: Cevat Riza sent a text message to us at Planet Vending yesterday in which he stated the following:
‘I have spoken to the administrator who confirmed your article was full of errors including the fact that they were never approached my (sic) the two companies in your article and have advised me to contact my solicitors which I have done.’
Chapter And Verse
We apologise to Mr. Riza for the errors we made, although we published in good faith and the source of our information was, we thought, impeccable. Our principal mistake was that we named two companies as having been bidders in an auction to acquire the assets of Seymour Valentine. The MD of one of the companies we named has contacted us to inform us that wasn’t the case. Consequently, we have removed that section of our article. Despite the accusation that the article was ‘full of errors’, the remainder of the piece, we maintain, is accurate.
Since we published our article, we have received a document entitled ‘Seymour Valentine Limited (In Administration), The Administrators’ Proposals.’ This means we can now offer our readers an irrefutable timeline for the events of the past several weeks.
Chapter and Verse
- On 18 July 2018 an FRP Advisory data room was created under the name ‘Project Mocha’ and teasers were sent to 317 parties, of which 24 signed NDAs and entered the data room.
- Subsequently, 2 parties spoke to the director and received additional information
- The company’s director made an offer of £80,000 to purchase the goodwill and business on 1 August 2018 with an offer for the physical assets to follow once independently valued. 40% of payment is to be paid on completion and the remaining 60% to be deferred over a period of 6 months.
- An offer to purchase the business was also made by an external third party of £105,000, subject to due diligence, on 8 August 2018. To be paid in full upon completion.
- After subsequent discussions, the company’s director submitted a revised offer of £130,000 on 9 August 2018, being £100,000 for assets and £30,000 for goodwill. With £40,000 to be paid on completion and the remainder to be paid in equal deferred installments over 6 months.
- On 24 August the pre-pack pool provided an opinion, which stated that there were no grounds to suggest that the grounds for the transaction were unreasonable.
- The transaction date was 28 August 2018
We hope this clarifies the situation, chapter and verse.
More Information
Moratoria, Prohibited Names and Other: Re-use of a Prohibited Name: The Gazette, HERE
