We have dealt with a number of situations where a deadlocked board, or shareholder group, is leaving a business with no functioning management and threatening to tip, what was otherwise a sound business, into insolvency.

We understand that there are usually strong reasons why the parties have taken the stance they have but also believe that working with parties we can enable a solution to be found so that progress can be made and value in the business retained and strengthened.

We were approached by both directors of a pseudo-partnership who had fallen out in dramatic fashion and could no longer operate the business together. As it stood the business was solvent although both parties felt pressured into placing the company into some form of insolvency as it could not function effectively with the breakdown in management.

Unfortunately, the particular type of business, guardianship for overseas students, meant that any insolvency would have seen a disproportionate level of costs and also resulted in 50 children not receiving the care and support they needed.

We worked with both parties to find a workable solution that allowed the company to see out its existing contractual obligations and cease to trade without requiring any insolvency process and without any breaches of its service obligations.

We were engaged by the family of a sole practitioner solicitor who had sadly passed away. Unfortunately, he had died whilst still running his practice and the family had found themselves suddenly responsible for the practice. Discussions with the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (the SRA) had not resulted in an intervention on their part and therefore the family were at a loss as to what to do.

We worked with the family to ensure that the ‘live’ cases the practice was dealing with were re-homed elsewhere, the client account balances were returned to the rightful homes, run-off cover was obtained and the closed cases were archived and appropriately stored. The SRA were engaged in the process and all the appropriate regulations were adhered to, leaving the SRA, the family and the clients all satisfied with the outcome.

We were instructed in another sad set of circumstances to help an individual who, following a serious car accident, found that he was no longer capable of running his two companies and needed someone to step in and trade them whilst a buyer was found.

We were able to undertake this work and found a purchaser for one of the companies. Whilst the other did not prove to be saleable, we were able to wind down its operations in a controlled and orderly fashion.

A client had traded his business for many years and was thinking of retirement. Deteriorating health, however, left him feeling unable to deal with the wind down of his business.

A freehold property meant that all creditors, including redundancy costs, would eventually be paid, but it would take time for the realisation to take place and creditors, including stocking loans, needed to be dealt with in this time.

We assisted in the closure of the business, including employee related issues, and communicated with creditors, including HMRC, whilst the freehold was marketed to obtain the optimum value, and then managed the discharge of the liabilities, without the need for any formalised insolvency procedure.