Insolvency work can have its scary moments. In January 1992 Grant Thornton were appointed as administrators of a group of companies that ran several amusement arcades in Clacton -on-Sea and Walton-on-Sea.
The companies were owned by an ex-Traveller family, whose patriarch treated it as an extension of his private bank account. The group comprised six companies, but had just one bank account (which was heavily overdrawn) and no one with any financial knowledge to handle the money. It was a cash business and the employees told us that the sons would frequently come in and take away bags of cash that was never declared.
The whole family and their spouses were employed in the business, even though half of them did not actually work (it saves on National Insurance to split the salary between two people) and all had private pensions, healthcare and high performance cars. The cars were impounded by us and taken to our “secure compound”. This was really an excuse for us to get to drive Mercs and BMW convertibles around Essex and Suffolk. We were only taking them to the site of another of our jobs in Frating, six or seven miles away from Clacton, but Melvin, team leader, was worried the families would follow us so they could steal the cars back. Well that was the story. We drove them at top speed to Ipswich and back.
In the end most were bought back by the family, except the patriarch’s car. This was sold quickly to a friend of the manager running the job. Even in that wild period this was shocking to everyone who found out.
This was the same job where there the most boozy, long lunches at the expense of the company. I felt embarrassed about doing this, but peer pressure compelled me to go along.
My part of the operation was to sort out all their arcade machines – of which there were over 600. In multiple arcades as well as in shops in the area. It had been started by one of my colleagues, Nick, but he was not the right person for the job and been sent back to the office for another assignment.
I sat down with his list and hundreds of finance agreements, then tried to match them up. The names on the machines and on the agreements did not match. The machines had been moved around sites so a machine may legally have been owned by one of the companies but be in the premises of another.
I had to undertake a second tour of all the sites as Nick’s information was not as accurate as it could have been and, having seen the agreements, I knew what information I needed to continue the unpicking of the mess. This meant crawling around the arcades that were closed for winter. At least the ones in Clacton were open.
The sons were still (allegedly) coming in taking money so we had to put our own staff in. I got Mike a job there (he had just moved back to Brightlingsea). It was not nice work for him – his car tyres were damaged and he suffered injuries as machines were dropped when his hands were underneath.
One asset of the group was a holiday park, which seemed like it had most of the valuable assets in it. Two of us were told to secure it and make sure it was not being looted. We went there to find the whole family, plus some thuggish helpers blocking our way in. They were carrying baseball bats and chains. The rest of the team arrived which led to a standoff. In the end they occupied the site and we put security guards round the site to stop them getting anything out. It was one of two times that I felt really unsafe doing the work. It was the only time that I was genuinely unsafe – hiring security guards had never been done before.
Someone bought the companies. Amusement arcades in seaside resorts are easily profitable, as long as you are not stealing takings and paying salaries to people doing no work.
I was commended for sorting out the hire purchase nightmare. The only bad thing was that in conjunction with other jobs that I was doing the insolvency team were now looking at me as someone they wanted with them permanently to do all these kind of jobs. Whilst it had been an interesting exercise it is not a pleasant business to be in. Some companies were their own worst enemies (like this one) but others were soul destroying to shut down and force people out of work.
Can U Dig It?
Five Miles Out 