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Risky Business

A blog by Martin Williams, external affairs spokesman of Graydon UK, focusing on business risks - from fraud to late payment. Martin has has spent the last 35 years in the credit information industry, and has been with Graydon UK, one of the top five commercial credit agencies in the UK, for the last 20. Apart from his PR duties, he teaches credit analysis to risk professionals and helps educate SMEs on the importance of maintaining a good credit rating. Martin is a Fellow of the Institute of Credit Management and is a sitting member of the Institute's Think Tank. He was also honoured by Credit Today, after being included on their Credit 100 list of people who have had the greatest impact in the credit industry during 2008, 2009 and 2010.

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Late Filer Gordon Ramsay now reveals all !

01 Jun 2009

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Under pressure TV chef Gordon Ramsay has been revealing in the papers today why his company Gordon Ramsay Holdings was a bit reticent in filing financial accounts at Companies House. In March last year in this blog, I was mentioning that the world had not yet seen any financial accounts since August 2005- the reason why Companies House fined him a few thousand quid at the time. Now we discover that in the autumn of last year, his auditors KPMG were advising him to put his organisation into administration as losses mounted due to overambitious overseas expansion.

Which only goes to show that credit reference agencies like Graydon are absolutely right when they automatically withdraw good credit ratings on late filers. Experience has proven there is usually a good reason why companies don't file on time in keeping with their statutory requirements. Even as I write, Gordon Ramsay Holdings' latest filed accounts available are for the year ended 31st August 2007. OK, they're pretty historical, but at least if they'd been filed earlier, one would have seen that bank loans had scarily risen from nothing in 2005 to 3, 500, 000 GBP in 2007.

Fortunately, as Mr Ramsay admits today in the press, he and his father in law have found some millions to pump into the business to save it from going to the wall, but I'm sure not all late filing companies have directors with the same deep pockets, so credit granters beware!

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Visitor comments

If I was Gordon's accountant he'd never have seen this day and he would never paid the late penalties!!! Change your accountants!!

Posted by: Rajiv Mehta , 01 Jun 2009

Perfectly in agreement. Credit rating agencies have no choice but to withdraw when companies fail to file. Filing is a condition of incorporation and delay should involve both fines (in short term) and threat of forced liquidation (in long term - say after 12 months).

Posted by: Edward Fenech , 02 Jun 2009

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