Liquidations

Whether you are an owner manager, company director or other stakeholder, the liquidation of a business can cause stress and disruption to all concerned. At RSM Farrell Grant Sparks, our focus is on managing the process to get the best possible outcome given the precarious state of the business and its financial position.

Clients choose us for our professional approach and the strength and depth of our experience. The considerable experience of our restructuring and insolvency team allows us to quickly untangle the complexities of each particular case, while advising relevant parties on their legal obligations.

In addition, through our membership of RSM International we can work for overseas clients such as multinational companies that sometimes require restructuring or wind up of certain companies.

Sample assignments

Declan Taite, who heads our Restructuring & Insolvency Department, is recognised as one of Ireland’s leading liquidation practitioners. Declan works closely with one of our founding partners, Pearse Farrell, who has extensive experience and has acted in many major liquidations, from Eurofood IFSC (the Irish subsidiary of the Parmalat Group) to the IRE-TEX group of companies.

Some of our other recent liquidation cases include:

• Birthdays (Ireland) Limited
• Vantive Holdings / Morston Investments. Holding companies to Liam Carroll’s Zoe Group: Holding companies became insolvent and sought appointment of Examiner. Examinership application failed. Appointed Official Liquidator by High Court. Ongoing liaison with various receivers to ascertain extent of inter-group indebtedness. Conducting investigation into reasons for collapse of group. Ongoing assignment.

Members’ Voluntary Liquidations

The main difference between a Members’ Voluntary Liquidation (MVL), a Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidation (CVL) and a High Court Liquidation is that in an MVL the company is solvent. When all liabilities have been paid, the remaining surplus is then distributed to the owners.

RSM Farrell Grant Sparks has conducted a wide variety of MVLs across sectors including:

• Property
• Financial services
• Retail
• Tourism and leisure
• Information technology

MVLs are often used where companies are no longer needed for trading purposes. Owners may also want to liquidate the company in order to move property or other assets from the company to personal ownership.

In MVLs, it is essential for the directors and shareholders to consider the full taxation implications. Our extensive experience in this area ensures that clients benefit from the most tax-efficient way of transferring assets from a company.

Our services also include:

• Advising and assisting on relevant company law issues
• Extraction of a company from within a group, ensuring that the extraction is done in a manner consistent with the core objectives of the business and its shareholders

RSM Farrell Grant Sparks has dealt with a number of complex MVLs, involving issues such as:

• Applying to the High Court to determine points of law
• Complex tax transactions
• Conversion of MVLs to Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidations

Acting as liquidator in cases which were in the public domain, including subsidiaries of major public limited companies

Related services

Read about our related services:

• Tax
• Audit
• Forensic Accounting