The administrator of sports data company Skylab has written to the secretary of state for business voicing concerns that the current directors “may be unfit to be involved with managing the affairs of a company in the future.”
Marco Piacquadio of FTS Recovery, which is handling the administration of digital agency Skylab, confirmed the report to the secretary of state has been made in a filing to Companies House, although the details of the report remain confidential.
Skylab entered administration in August 2022 after being acquired by Inc & Co in a distressed sale in May 2020.
The filing adds that Skylab is expected to owe HMRC £651,746.69 – a figure which the company’s former directors Nigel Collier and David Logan claim the new owners were responsible for increasing by over half a million pounds since the sale – in deductions from employees’ wages and outstanding VAT, and is consequently “unlikely” to make any payments to secondary creditors, following its administration.
Skylab previously counted Manchester Utd, Manchester City, Formula 1 teams, Henley Regatta and the International Olympics Committee among its clients.
Piacquadio says £20,000 in Skylab book debt has not been recovered due to “lack of information being supplied by the company.” A total of £8,135-worth of computer equipment was also reported missing with the directors “not able to confirm” what has happened to the assets.
Piacquadio added: “I confirm that the report to the Secretary of State has been submitted with supporting evidence of identified wrongdoing.”
Inc & Co’s legal team have confirmed to Prolific North that the contents of the report are disputed and that “Any HMRC arrears were built up by previous directors and not those of Inc & Co or its Directors.”
The former directors reject this, stating that when Skylab was sold in May 2020 there was a debt of only £116,155, which was pre-arranged with HMRC under Covid time-to-pay arrangements designed to support business’ cash flow at the height of the pandemic. They added that this sum was fully disclosed to all potential purchasers during the administration process.
