A Dundee company that received a grant of £250,000 to help boost its staff by more than 100 employees over the past two years is to be liquidated.
Call Centre Dynamics Ltd, Camperdown Street, City Quay, which now has only 43 employees, will, however, be allowed to continue trading pending negotiations with a potential buyer from within the company.
Insolvency practitioner Graeme Smith of Dundee accountants Henderson Loggie has been appointed provisional liquidator after a petition was presented to the sheriff court by former managing director Russell McKeever, seeking a court order to wind up the company.
Mr Smith told The Courier he was approached on Friday to begin the liquidation process, but stressed that while the company would be liquidated the business itself would continue and as many jobs as possible safeguarded.
He also warned he would be investigating how the company, which acts as a call centre for other companies, had been run since receiving the £250,000 grant.
“I got the court’s authority to continue to run the company in order to protect the rights of the creditors,” he said. “We are already in negotiations with a potential buyer from within the company.”
Mr Smith declined to name the potential buyer, but The Courier understands Mr McKeever is one of the people in talks with liquidators.
Stressing that he had had no contact with the company before he was brought in as provisional liquidator, Mr Smith added, “There were a number of employees made redundant before Christmas as part of attempts to rationalise the business, but after Christmas things were a bit more clear.Petition likely to be granted”The petition to wind up the company is likely to be granted, and by keeping the business running we can hopefully ensure all employees who were made redundant can be given their full entitlement to redundancy pay and creditors receive a dividend.
“At the point where I was approached there was no money for wages and the bank had reached its limit. There was no money to pay employees, and without an arrangement for another company to take over they would have been paid off.
“It was a very difficult decision and a difficult position to take, but to maximise the return to creditors that’s something that I had to do.”
Mr Smith revealed the company would have had debts of around £20,000 if the business was allowed to go under.
He said there were 43 employees still there, down from around 150 last year.
Asked about the £250,000 grant, he said, “I am aware of the fact the company received that and I will be looking into that. The directors are aware that I will be looking at that and they are aware I will be investigating how the company has been operating in the past.”
Call Centre Dynamics Ltd was seen as one of Dundee’s success stories since its inception in 2006, with a staff of only 16.
Mr McKeever launched the company along with fellow director Malcolm Jarvis and swiftly increased the size of its business and the number of employees by around eight each month, Mr Jarvis said in August 2009.
The £250,000 funding from the Scottish Government’s Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) grants helped establish a second call centre for the company after it “effectively ran out of space” at its original premises, and was expected to increase the staff by 116 to around 150.