Dozens of small businesses suffer after Halliwells’ collapse
Documents leaked to The Lawyer have revealed the full extent of collapsed firm Halliwells’ creditors.
The joint administrators, Dermot Power and Shay Bannon of BDO, made their first report to Halliwells’ creditors last week. Between them the creditors are owed £14.1m.
The largest sum is owed to HM Revenue & Customs, but the extensive list also includes small businesses, including florists, stationers and several chauffeur companies, as well as charity St John Ambulance.
The owner of one City sandwich shop that supplied Halliwells with thousands of pounds worth of food up until the day the firm collapsed believes the unpaid bills may result in job cuts at his business.
Daljit Randhawa, who runs Pavarotti’s Sandwich Bar on Threadneedle Street near Halliwells’ London office, said the firm ordered significant quantities of food in the weeks before it went bankrupt.
“They had a lot of meetings and took the p*ss,” added Randhawa. “I went on holiday and came back to find they must have racked up [a bill of] £3,500-£4,000.”
Documents indicate that Pavarotti’s was owed £2,000, but Randhawa claims he has evidence of unpaid bills totalling £6,500 dating back to November last year.
On 23 June, the day before Halliwells filed its notice of intention to appoint an administrator, Randhawa says the firm ordered food including spring rolls, chicken satays and crisps worth £319.26.
“I’m thinking of letting somebody go,” added Randhawa. “It’s bad enough with the recession, my business is down by 35 per cent as it is. This is a lot of money.”
The Lawyer contacted Halliwells’ former accounts department, but it did not return calls.
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Readers' comments (19)
Vercingetorix | 21-Sep-2010 2:30 pm
@Anonymous @5.03pm re clients paying for counsel's fees
If the client has paid the solicitor for counsel's fees then surely that is client money? In which case it should be there in the client account. If it isnt then that is a matter The Lawyer should be investigating very seriously. If it is true then something was badly amiss.
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Anonymous | 21-Sep-2010 3:41 pm
Vercingetorix: you'd have thought so wouldn't you?
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Alex Gill | 21-Sep-2010 3:58 pm
Talk about "have your cake and eat it"!
Charging £319.00 for some crisps, satay and chicken is pretty pricey and no wonder they went bankrupt.
You should be ashamed of your self Mr Randhawa. Something like crisps, chicken and satay would cost about a fiver up north!!!
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Bladdy Norveners | 21-Sep-2010 4:45 pm
Satay is not available oop north
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Anonymous | 21-Sep-2010 8:16 pm
I wonder - are Salford University on the list?
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cornholio | 22-Sep-2010 11:15 am
Alex Gill & Bladdy Norveners:
I'm sure it mentioned somewhere that the sandwiches were supplied by a London shop. But perhaps your prejudice blinded you.
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val | 22-Sep-2010 11:05 pm
it's been a long time since i studied commercial law, but my recollection is that if a partnership went down the partners personally were jointly and severally liable for the debts, and if a company traded and ran up debts whilst insolvent, the directors ditto. So - have a go creditors. I'm sure the ex-partners or directors of halliwell could probably scrape a few bob together
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John | 23-Sep-2010 10:50 am
Not all that long ago, when solicitors were in a profession, not the grubby trade it now is, leaving one's suppliers (including St Johns for goodness sake) in the lurch would have been treated as gross misconduct unbefitting a member of the (former) profession and the partners would have been struck off.
These days in modern Britain, it is probably regarded as rather clever to behave like that.
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Mike | 23-Sep-2010 12:32 pm
Val - I'm surprised you admit to having studied commercial law at all.
Firstly - Halliwell's isn't a partnership it is an LLP. Therefore the members have limited liability and are not joint and severally liabile for the debts of the business.
Secondly you then mix up partners with directors - partners are principals in a partnership and directors are officers of a limited company. The people you refer to are actually members of an LLP.
I agree with the sentiment of your comment that (some of) the members of Halliwells LLP have acted badly but the law, as drafted, doesn't allow any easy remedy.
The quality of legal opinion in the comments on this story is woeful. No wonder law firms are in the state they are in.
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