The liquidator of collapsed portal Boomin is investigating a sale of the portal's intellectual property to My Bespoke Room as its latest update revealed there would be insufficient funds to repay both secured and unsecured creditors, including money owed to staff.
Boomin, setup by former Purplebricks boss Michael Bruce, entered liquidation in November 2022 after it struggled to raise additional funding.
An update from liquidators BK Plus this month said its investigations had found that the intellectual property of Boomin had been sold to interior design business My Bespoke Room – purchased by Bruce in June 2022 – in the 12 months leading to the liquidation.
BK Plus said it has instructed Squire Pattern Boggs to consider the disposal of the assets to a third party. The investigation is ongoing and there is no suggestion of wrongdoing in the document.
The liquidator has also submitted a confidential report on the conduct of the Boomin directors to the Department for Business, Energy and Industry Strategy, as is common practice in an administration or liquidation.
The Companies House filing also shows that My Bespoke Room is a secured creditor and is owed £615,000, which is not expected to be repaid.
Another 158 unsecured creditors, including 74 employees owed money such as redundancy pay, have debts totalling £7.3m, of which £6.5m worth of claims have been received from 27 creditors.
BK Plus estimates that net assets will not exceed £10,000 so this money is also unlikely to be repaid.
The company is due a VAT refund from HMRC worth £37,856 but it also owes the taxman £1.8m in unpaid PAYE and national insurance contributions. HMRC as made a total claim worth £2.1m, with £1.4m as a secondary preferential creditor and £669,679 as on an unsecured basis.
BK Plus said its initial fee estimate is insufficient to complete its duties, which include finalising debt recoveries, investigations and submitting VAT and tax returns and it expects total costs to reach £118,264
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There appears to be some real “cloak and dagger” goings-on with liquidations.
I seriously enquired about acquiring Boomin and was told there was no client list or IP for the portal as part of the business sale. I find that extremely odd as the business was exactly that - a portal.
Promises of an investigation into why these weren’t part of the sale never materialised and it now seems the final curtain in this sorry saga is a token £10,000 payment by Michael to pay liquidators fees and leave creditors and former employees substantially out of pocket.
Could more have been achieved to pay those who lost out? I don’t doubt it, but a higher price is difficult to achieve when it seems liquidators have a preferred buyer and won’t work with other interested parties to achieve a better figure…
And they say estate agents have a bad reputation for this sort of thing…
All The silly Agents that signed up, "I TOLD YOU SO" love it when I am right again..
net asserts 10 grand lol, 7,2 million owed, someone somewhere ran off with the investors money and must be basking on the beaches of the maldives
Shocking
Unbelievable that HMRC allowed such a debt of this size to accumulate "£1.8m in unpaid PAYE and national insurance contributions".
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