Pera Consulting brought down by overdraft woes
The unsecured creditors of the collapsed Melton Mowbray firm Pera Consulting have been offered just 6p in the pound, according to papers seen by TheBusinessDesk.com, while being owed a total of £2.36m.
Pera Consulting entered administration in September, with all 49 staff being made redundant. Just £130,000 will be available for unsecured creditors.
Meanwhile, some £500,000 will be paid to Pera Consulting’s one secured creditor – Pera Innovation Ltd.
Pera Consulting brought in administrators from Alix Partners after losing a £25m contract with the now defunct Business Growth Service (BGS) twelve months earlier than expected.
However, it was the collapse of other Pera companies which finally brought Pera Consulting down. During March and April Pera Training entered into a creditors’ voluntary liquidation (CVL), Pera Technology was placed into administration and Pera Management Services Ltd (PMSL) was also placed into CVL.
Pera Consulting shared banking facilities with Training, Technology and PMSL which required the companies to ensure that, collectively, the aggregate account balances were not overdrawn.
As the account balances of Training, Technology and PWSL were “significantly” overdraw, according to Alix Partners, Consulting’s positive cash balance was relied upon to support the facility. However, the collapse of the other three companies meant that Consulting took a £7.4m hit to its balance.
Because of this, Pera Consulting failed to make any of its repayments to Pera Innovation and other funding streams failed to materialise and the directors started to try and sell the business – but no interest was forthcoming.
Administrators from Alix Partners were appointed on 16 September.
Unsecured creditors of Pera Consulting include BDO which is owed £126,360.
