Marchbury loses €1.5m with outstanding loans of €27.2m

A COMPANY in which Thomas Hopkins, formerly a senior executive with AIB, has a 50 per cent interest had accumulated losses of €1.5 million at the end of April 2010, according to accounts just filed.

Marchbury Properties had outstanding bank loans of €27.2 million. The directors said it was their view that the company’s main financial lenders would continue to support it. The accounts list the company’s banks as Bank of Ireland and Ulster Bank.

Mr Hopkins resigned as a director of the AIB subsidiary, AIB Commercial Services Ltd, on November 17th, 2010, filings in the Companies Office show, and it is understood he is no longer an employee of the bank.

In November 2010 AIB filed a High Court case against Mr Hopkins and his wife Mairéad. The reasons for the action were not disclosed and it has not gone ahead.

Marchbury had accumulated losses of €346,768 at the end of April 2009. The company’s creditors at the end of April 2010 were owed €28.92 million while its stock was valued at €26.9 million, according to the accounts.

Stock constituted work in progress which the accounts said were the purchase costs of land in Maynooth, Co Kildare, and Donabate, Co Dublin, less a 28 per cent deduction, being the directors’ best estimate of the deterioration in value of the sites at the account date.

The value of the sites was €21.6 million, the accounts said. “The remainder of the work in progress relates to the costs incurred to date on a site owned by the directors at Terenure, Dublin 6W.”

The accounts state that the directors and shareholders have agreed to defer indefinitely the repayment of loans they advanced to the company totalling €1 million.

The directors of the company during the year were Mairéad Hopkins and Thomas and Mary Durcan. The shareholders as per the latest annual return are Mr Hopkins and Mr Durcan.

As previously reported, in January 2009 Mr Hopkins transferred the ownership of his family home on Palmerston Park, Rathmines, to his wife.

The Hopkinses transferred their interest in a property on Kenilworth Square, Rathgar, Dublin, to themselves acting as trustees for the Hopkins Trust, in March 2009.

Marchbury built 222 houses in Balbriggan, Co Dublin, in the year to the end of April 2007, when it made pretax profits of €3.3 million.