Fortress Information Systems Limited, which traded as Ticket Rocket and formerly as Ticket Direct, was appointed liquidators by order of the High Court at Dunedin in October 2020, following a petition from Hurricanes Investment Limited Partnership.
The company was owned by former Dunedin businessman Matthew Davey, who was once the largest shareholder in the Highlanders.
Receivers took custody and control of the company’s assets and continued to trade its business with the view to sell it as a going concern.
Despite carrying out an independent sales process, they were unable to sell the business and assets as such and so ceased trading in November 2020.
Receivership was completed in May this year with control of the company being handed back to the liquidator.
The final liquidation report, released this week, stated that Fortress’ total indebtedness to the Bank of New Zealand, a secured creditor, was $5,124,195.17.
A total sum of $4.81m remained outstanding, either through direct borrowing or cross guarantees, but no further distributions were able to be made by the liquidator.
Total preferential claims totalling $8,886.63 were received in relation to court costs awarded to two creditors that petitioned for the company to be liquidated, and preferential employee claims of approximately $25,000 remained outstanding.
The liquidator had also received a preferential claim from the Inland Revenue Department for GST and PAYE arrears of $512,163.97.
No payments were made towards any of these claims.
Unsecured creditors were also left $4,569,415.87 out of pocket.
‘‘Unfortunately, there were insufficient recoveries in the liquidation to enable a distribution to unsecured creditors,’’ the report said.
The report noted that Mr Davey was adjudicated bankrupt by the Christchurch High Court in May last year, before also being adjudicated bankrupt in Australia a month later.
‘‘Accordingly there would be no economic benefit in investigating any further actions related to Mr Davey, including investigations as to whether any breaches of directors duties may have occurred.’’
The company was now ready to be removed from the New Zealand Companies Register.
The liquidator had drawn disbursements of $6,208.82 excluding GST, in the liquidation.
A further $33,411.50 in time and $253.07 of disbursements, both excluding GST, had been invoiced but not received due to insufficient recoveries, the report said.
