urgent help

[wales01man]

anyone who can advise urgently please
we are a ltd company and have been issued with a petition to wnd up the company on the 17th of july by a supplier if they go ahead what is the petition regards the lease we have on a pub which they do not know is in the name of the company although only the rent is invoiced to and payed by the company i know its complicated but someone mus be able to ffer some advice PLEASE

[jholden]

Not an answer, but take advice now.

To stop the winding up petition pay the supplier! I am assuming you owe them money and have no dispute with the goods? No reason not to pay.

[wales01man]

i have offered to pay the debt personally in instalments but they will not accept this if 1 pay 75%which i can afford can they still obtain a winding up order

[jholden]

I am not an expert in this area, but get it in writing that they will not seek to continue with the winding up if you agree payment terms.

[Stonelaughter]

IMO the Court will take a VERY dim view of a winding up application when you have offered 75% up front - the idea is to avoid Court at any cost until it is unavoidable. Any Judge seeing that they've turned down your offer COULD easily deny the petition.

[apeebles]

I'm surprised that the court would take a dim view if someone owed a lot of money and they had not accepted the 75%. No expert though! If they turned up at court and the person still owed the 100% then I would say it had been a delaying tactic.

IMHO the debtor should make the payment anyway reducing the debt to 25% which would probably help rather than just offer. That way the creditor can then take the decision on the 25% of the debt and see if it is worth talking to come up with new payment terms or continuing with the petition. At the end of the day you can raise a petition for any debt over £750 although it will cost around £880 in court fees plus legal costs on top. You are not going to raise a petition for a small debt and it is a quicker way to find out if you are going to be paid! I believe that as soon as the petition is approved which takes around 2 weeks it has to be served and then it can be advertised in the Gazette which all the banks have to read. Once they see the petition I understand that they are likely to freeze bank accounts which is probably not a good position to be in.

From my experience, we have a client doing a similar thing offering to pay invoices over 90 days in the next 3 months. We have not agreed these terms and refuse to accept them as I'm sure that they are using this to delay payment. If they paid 75% now we are still owed a lot of money so there seems no point in ending the petition. If I was only owed say £1K then I'd probably end the petition and come up with a suitable payment plan.