This is the third time that Business Money has gone bust in the years that I have been writing the Factoring Blog with a fourth company having also published the journal and now dormant which surely says something about the Lefroy family’s abilities as business people. Someone did comment on one of the earlier blog posts that there were earlier failures but I haven’t been able to verify those.
In 2011 the Lefroys tried to fool onlookers by changing the name of Business Money Ltd to Montirone Ltd prior to putting it in liquidation thus hoping that no-one would notice whilst the magazine carried on being published under Business-Money.com Ltd.
The statement of affairs of the previously named Business Money Ltd showed that the net worth of £43,500 in the last published accounts dated just a few months prior to liquidation had now turned into a huge deficit of £481,000 according to the statement of affairs with HMRC (yes that’s you and me) owed a massive £127,000
The new publisher (Business-Money.com Ltd) carried on for a further couple of years before that went into Administration with a deficiency of £161,000 and owing HMRC (yes that’s still you and me) even more this time round at £183,000
There was some very creative accounting at use here as there was a statement in the Administrator’s report that “On 21st October 2012 the company acquired 25% of the brand value of Business Money magazine from RH Lefroy at a market value of £250,000″ This implies that the brand name was worth £1m which was a huge sum for a magazine that kept going bust
Still undaunted by the second “bust” within a couple of years the magazine carried on regardless this time published under the umbrella of Business Money E-mbrace Ltd helped with the financing by the late unlamented factoring company First Capital Factors Ltd. This company hasn’t gone bust but didn’t trade for long, seemingly to cease at about the same time as it’s factoring company went bust. It’s last filed Balance Sheet as at September 2021 shows current assets of £250,000 with current liabilities of a similar amount but no details of what these amounts represent.
At some period in the last few years the publisher changed to Business Money Promotions Ltd but any hope that this one might be more successful was dashed when this incarnation went bust last week just a short while after it’s erstwhile Managing Director Sophie Groves resigned in favour of RH Lefroy.
The statement of affairs shows a deficit of £138,000 with HMRC owed £83,000 this time around.
Is this the end of Business Money? Not likely it’s now being published under the banner of Business Money Europe Ltd and I wonder how long this one will last.
