Flannery hotel family row settled after payouts from retained profits

The deal to resolve the Flannery family row over how its hotels were run was financed out of the group’s retained profits, with three shareholders receiving payouts, new accounts show.

The Flannery-owned Foxfield Inns DAC owns the Ashling Hotel in Dublin and the Imperial Hotel in Galway, along with a hostel, a restaurant, and a direct provision centre.

The group also owns a number of properties from which it earns rental income.

The family row reached the Commercial Court in January 2021, with the new accounts showing that it was resolved in June 2022 after three of the five shareholders sold their shareholdings back to the company.

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The directors’ report attached to new Foxfield Inns DAC accounts states that this buy-back “was financed from an adequate level of retained earnings”.

The consolidated accounts show that Foxfield Inns DAC had accumulated profits of €50.23 million at the end of 2019.

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Separate documents lodged with the Companies Office show that shareholdings owned by Andrena Flannery and Mary Flannery were purchased by the company on June 24th, 2022 and the two resigned from the company’s board the same day.

Sheelagh Flannery resigned as a company director on May 27th, 2022 but she did not have a shareholding in the business.

Kevin Flannery and Frank Flannery remain on company’s board and approved its accounts on February 14th.

The two state in their report that “two shareholders now remain in the company and each now owns 50 per cent of the total issued share capital”.

Tom Murray was appointed to the board on June 25th, 2022.

The hotel group recorded revenues of €22 million in 2019, the last pre-Covid year, and paid out of a dividend of €2.75 million.

A note attached to the new accounts states that draft financial statements confirm that the group recorded a profit of €1.75 million in 2021, following a loss of €216,000 in 2020.

The group recorded an operating profit of €6.1 million in 2019. However, a non-cash writedown in investment property assets of €5.63 million, offset by interest income of €483,671, reduced profits to a pretax profit of €934,055. This was sharply down on the 2018 pretax profit of €5.74 million.

At the end of 2019, the group had cash funds of €10.63 million. Pay to directors in 2019 totalled €787,206.