THE NEW board and management at the international property company formerly owned by businessman Seán Quinn will seek to appoint a bankruptcy receiver to the family’s company in Sweden.
Mr Quinn and his family won a court ruling in Sweden last month over-ruling the dismissal of Quinn Investments Sweden by the receiver that was appointed by Anglo Irish Bank to its parent Irish company.
The legal victory may prove pyrrhic as Quinn International Property Holdings, to which Kieran Wallace of KPMG was appointed receiver, is seeking to install a “bankruptcy receiver” in Sweden on June 14th.
The directors appointed by Mr Wallace are considering whether to seek to appeal the court ruling, though such a move may be overtaken by the appointment of the bankruptcy receiver to the firm.
Quinn Investments Sweden holds the Quinn family’s international properties in Sweden, Britain, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and India.
Together these are worth about €500 million.
The company, which has several related subsidiaries in Sweden, has debts of about €463 million.
The family set up the company to hold the assets for tax purposes.
The Stockholm District Court found that the dismissal of directors of the Swedish company and the replacements installed by Mr Wallace were invalid.
The court found that the Quinn family showed “probable grounds” that Anglo represented them at a shareholders’ meeting on April 18th “without the correct documentation of competence”.
The ruling said the decision to appoint new directors at Quinn Investments Sweden should not be implemented until further notice.
Following the court ruling, lawyers for the Quinn family, Eversheds O’Donnell Sweeney, wrote to Mr Wallace’s lawyers last month seeking any documentation in relation to the Swedish firm.
They demanded that no further steps be taken on the instruction of Robert Dix, the former KPMG partner appointed by Mr Wallace to the Quinn family’s property business, and that any instructions given be countermanded.
Anglo appointed Mr Wallace receiver over the family’s shares in Quinn Group (ROI), the ultimate parent company of the Quinn Group, and the international property group on April 14th.
The receiver changed the boards of the subsidiary companies across the property group, including at the Swedish company.
The Quinn family owe Anglo Irish Bank a total of almost €2.9 billion, of which €2.344 billion relates to loans advanced by the bank to cover Mr Quinn’s losses on his investments in Anglo and the family’s share purchases in the bank.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VR3765MFOBH2NMV2QNICYDF67M.png)