A CREDITOR of the troubled P Elliott construction group has taken the first step towards winding the business up over a €100,000 debt.
The Cavan group laid off most of its staff shortly before Easter and is understood to have been in talks with its banks.
It emerged yesterday that a subcontracting firm, OMC Engineering, has served a 21-day notice on the company seeking the payment of money due to it for work carried out on a number of contracts. If the debt is not settled within the 21-day period, OMC is entitled to go ahead and petition to High Court to wind Elliott up.
OMC is understood to be due in the region of €100,000 related to two contracts, one which Elliott carried out for the Department of Defence, another for a project completed for a private-sector client.
Shortly before the Elliott group laid off staff last month, it met representatives of the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) after a number of subcontractors contacted that organisation to raise concerns regarding payments due to them from the building firm.
It also had talks with representatives of OMC, a specialist in working with steel, precast, glass and other materials, regarding the money due to that company.
The Elliott group is involved in both contracting – design and construction for other parties – and property development. In common with other such businesses, it uses subcontractors to carry out much specialist work.
Most recently it had been working on a site at St Patrick’s teacher training college in Drumcondra on the northside of Dublin.
Elliott’s main financiers are Ulster Bank and Bank of Scotland Ireland. It also owes money to Bank of Ireland and Anglo Irish Bank, which are part of the bank rescue process run by the State’s assets agency, Nama.
The agency is understood to have taken over these loans. The assets and security involved are said to be good quality.
The group bought the former headquarters of The Irish Times on D’Olier Street in Dublin in 2006 and recently completed its redevelopment as a mixed commercial and retail complex.
The Elliott family controls the business through an unlimited entity, P Elliott Group, and Elliott Holdings Ltd.
The most recent accounts for Elliott Holdings show that it lost €28 million in 2009. Its operations actually made a €10 million profit, but €35 million worth of writedowns, related to its own assets and those of related parties, and a €3 million loss from a joint venture, left it in the red.
The accounts show that other group companies owed Elliott Holdings a total of €65 million at the end of 2009. A large number of these businesses were involved in property investment and development. Elliott Holdings accounts show that members of the family loaned a total of €3.5 million to the company in 2009.
The company employed over 230 people at that point, but the number of workers in the group has fallen in recent years as it sub-contracted out a large proportion of its work. It was not possible to reach anyone at the group’s offices in Cavan and Dublin for a comment yesterday.
