A Queenstown company once involved in the construction of Dunedin\u2019s Forsyth Barr Stadium has left creditors nearly $7 million out of pocket 15 years after entering liquidation.<\/p>\n
Steve Rout Contracting Ltd was put into receivership in May 2011 and subsequently placed into liquidation in August 2011, both of which were completed on Monday.<\/p>\n
Liquidator Craig Melhuish, of Nexia New Zealand, confirmed the total estimated shortfall to all creditors was $6,909,889 \u2014 comprising $4,779,751 to secured and $2,130,138 to unsecured creditors.<\/p>\n
Stephen Rout is listed as the company\u2019s sole director.<\/p>\n
Contacted for comment yesterday, Mr Rout said he had not had anything to do with the liquidation for at least 10 years and did not know the numbers involved.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018I would have thought it would be a lot less than that, but I don\u2019t know the figures because I\u2019ve never seen them.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
He believed the numbers were \u2018\u2018all around finance, not what\u2019s owed to individuals\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n
Asked if there was anything he wanted to say to the people still owed money, Mr Rout said: \u2018\u2018No, not at this point. It\u2019s too far in the history.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018All I can say is we\u2019ve sorted everyone we needed to.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
The process over the past 15 years had been \u2018\u2018personally … very difficult\u2019\u2019, he said.<\/p>\n
Steve Rout Contracting was established in 1981 and was involved in the construction of Dunedin\u2019s Forsyth Barr Stadium.<\/p>\n
The liquidators\u2019 final report stated the company operated an earthworks moving operation, which did business principally in Queenstown.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018The directors attributed the downturn in the industry, the loss of several large contracts and significant bad debts.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
At the time the company went into receivership, Mr Rout told the Otago Daily Times work on the stadium would continue with his other company, Blue 9 Ltd, where many of the workers affected by the receivership had been redeployed.<\/p>\n
That company was placed into liquidation in June 2014 by the High Court at Christchurch, and has since been removed from the New Zealand Companies Register.<\/p>\n
There have been a total of 32 receivers\u2019 reports published over the duration of Steve Rout Contracting\u2019s receivership.<\/p>\n
The final report said the receivers were able to conclude a sale for the business and part of the company\u2019s fleet to Blue 9 at market value.<\/p>\n
This allowed them to maximise the value of all work in progress and facilitate the completion of contracts, \u2018\u2018which would have otherwise been unrecoverable had the business ceased to trade\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018This included facilitating the completion of a contract for Hawkins Construction Ltd relating to the Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
A settlement was negotiated with Hawkins and the completion of various other contracts was facilitated as part of the pre-packed sale.<\/p>\n
The majority of the company\u2019s remaining assets were sold by public tender and net proceeds were distributed to secured creditors.<\/p>\n
A total of $3.5m was distributed to secured creditors during the receivership.<\/p>\n
Steve Rout Contracting also had a general security agreement with UDC Finance Ltd; the receivers and managers were appointed under the terms of this agreement.<\/p>\n
The report said the amount due as it related to the agreement totalled $3.83m, before interest.<\/p>\n
UDC Finance declined to comment on the amount due when contacted.<\/p>\n
BDO Christchurch partner Colin Gower said the directors had co-operated with the receivers and the receivership was now brought to a conclusion.<\/p>\n
He said the receivers had noted the length of time it took to complete the receivership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Queenstown company once involved in the construction of Dunedin\u2019s Forsyth Barr Stadium has left creditors nearly $7…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-517929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}