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Time assets missing, say administrators
£3m worth of stock sent abroad before the collapse...

By Colin Barker

Published: Friday 30 September 2005

Creditors have been denied a meeting with the administrators of Granville Technology, owner of the Time and Tiny Computer brands, which collapsed in July with debts that are now estimated to be as large as £70m.

In a statement, Grant Thornton admitted they were still finding it very difficult to track down the assets of the various Granville companies, saying "stock records are incomplete" and "[there] is significant concern as to missing quantities of stock" and alleging that much of this was missing from the company's retail premises. Grant Thornton believes more than half the stock had been removed.

The administrators also believe that UK stock to the value of more than £3m had recently been moved to France in order to set up a mail-order business. In their statement, Grant Thornton said "there is insufficient explanation on file" of the rationale behind the decision to siphon off assets to start a business in France while the UK business was failing and no explanation of what had happened to the stock.

Grant Thornton said in its statement there was no point in holding a meeting of unsecured creditors (people who had paid for computers but never received them) - on the grounds that "there will be insufficient property" to distribute. It was reported this week that the administrators had sold the assets of Tiny Computers and Tiny.com to Watford Electronics for an undisclosed sum.

With no audited accounts available, Grant Thornton estimated that Granville's losses in 2004 were £5.7m but began to spiral out of control in 2005.

Throughout the demise of Granville Technology there has been repeated speculation among the ex-employees at Time Computers about the way in which the company was handled. These allegations surfaced in the tinycon.com website, which was closed recently, apparently after complaints by Grant Thornton. The employees had repeatedly asked questions about various companies that had been formed by the previous owners of Granville Technology, in France and elsewhere.

Grant Thornton said there are many things about the Granville collapse "that will require further investigation".

Colin Barker writes for ZDNet UK