A court hearing will decide whether the company will go into administration, be wound up to meet creditors’ demands or taken over for a fraction of the value of its contracts, including lucrative ones in the Middle East.Shares have been trading recently at 2.9p – making the company worth just £7.27 million. Five firms were thought to be bidding for it but only one – Bahrain-based Arcapita Bank Ltd – is believed to be in serious talks to pay 4p a share –just £10 million for the firm. Earlier this year the company was prepared to pay more than £50 million to buy it.
AssetCo, hit by boardroom rows and the resignation of its founder, John Shannon, has lurched from crisis to crisis since the beginning of the year. It nearly collapsed in April when HM Revenue and Customs launched a winding up petition for £4.5 million of unpaid tax and a law firm sought another £1 million. AssetCo diluted its share price to raise more cash. Now it faces a £1.3 million demand from Northern Bank and HMRC is coming back next month for more money it is owed.
The London Fire Brigade, despite being pressed by the Fire Brigades Union, won’t say what – if any – contingency plans it has in place to deal with the problem.
Ian Leahair of the London FBU said: “We have witnessed AssetCo in meltdown, and this prompted us to seek assurances about what contingency plans were in place. Regrettably, Brigade managers have obstinately refused to disclose this information, telling us at a recent meeting that they had ‘no desire’ to share details with us.”
All this follows a National Audit Office report revealing that the last Labour Government wasted hundreds of millions of pounds building nine purpose-built fire control centres to replace 46 existing ones. None of them work, £469 million has been wasted and the government is still paying £50,000 a day to rent useless centres.
FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said: “There was a reckless use of taxpayers’ money at a time when frontline fire services were being cut. Throughout it all no one listened to what the professional firefighters and fire control staff were saying.
