Niall Quinn broadband business looks to appoint liquidator

A broadband business owned by former footballer Niall Quinn has called a meeting of creditors with the aim of appointing a liquidator.

Alphasat Communications had a shareholder deficit of over €2.8 million in the last set of accounts filed with the companies office in October 2015.

At that time the company had creditors to the tune of over €3.5 million. Some €1.4 million was owed to the company's parent company, Q-Sat Holdings, of which Mr Quinn and his wife Gillian Quinn are also directors.

Another €1 million was owed to one of the company's ultimate shareholders, Maxillian, a British Virgin Islands vehicle owned by a group of Irish and international investors. It is not clear if either of these sums are still outstanding.

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Rural Ireland

Commenting on the health of the company in 2014, Mr Quinn told the Irish Examiner newspaper that he was "pretty certain that the business will record a decent profit in 2014".

The former Irish footballer did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Irish Times.

Mr Quinn's Q-Sat was embroiled in an almost £1 million financial dispute earlier this year with listed British satellite company Avanti Communications.

Q-Sat bought bandwidth from Avanti and used this to provide broadband services to more than 3,000 households in rural Ireland, targeting hard-to-reach areas with limited access to other forms of broadband.

The dispute between Avanti and Q-Sat led the British company to effectively switch off Q-Sat’s services in May, leaving its customers without service.

The creditors meeting for Alphasat Communications is due to take place on September 11th.