Xsil staff await pay after sale of company assets

DESPITE THE sale of intellectual property and equipment for $2.3 million, former staff of Xsil are still waiting for wages and other money owed to them when the company suddenly ceased trading last October.

As creditors of Xsil, some staff are now considering an attempt to have the company placed into liquidation. In a conference call with investors earlier this week, Paul Oldham, chief financial officer of the Nasdaq-quoted Electro Scientific Industries, said: “We paid $2.3 million to purchase intellectual property and related capital assets of Xsil.”

However, in an e-mail subsequently sent to former staff, Xsil chairman and founder Peter Conlon said the “purchase process will not be fully completed until July 2010 at the very earliest” and it may be “much later than this”.

When contacted by The Irish Times yesterday, Mr Conlon said he was bound by a non-disclosure agreement, but he confirmed the deal would not be completed until July 2010. About 40 former Xsil staff, who were laid off at the end of October 2008 and made redundant on December 18th last, have had to pursue the company through the mechanisms of the Employment Appeals Tribunal and the Labour Relations Commission (LRC).

They claim they are owed their last month’s salary, holiday pay and payment in lieu of notice. The total amount due is approximately €250,000.

Edward O’Leary, who was the materials controller at Xsil, said staff are awaiting an LRC ruling on the outstanding money: “The staff were laid off and made redundant by the company itself – we did not make ourselves redundant – and the redundancy we received was directly from the State.”

A number of interrelated companies make up the Xsil group. Xsil Ltd employed the Irish staff which, at one point, numbered 150. Sales were booked through Xsil International, while the patents and other intellectual property were held by Xsil Technology.

Mr Conlon claims to have had no executive role at Xsil in the two years prior to the company shutting up shop last October. Since stepping down as chief executive of Xsil, he has established Ammado, a social networking website described as a “Facebook for charities”. He founded the firm with Anna Kupka, a fellow director at Xsil.

In his e-mail to staff this week Mr Conlon said that, last October, “the directors of the Xsil companies were presented with a situation where Xsil Ltd could no longer continue as a going concern. The Xsil group situation is very complex and the executive management had left.” He said the directors are being advised by an insolvency partner at one of Ireland’s top commercial law firms.

Xsil provided specialist equipment to semiconductor manufacturers and won numerous industry awards. It made a pretax profit of €8.5 million on sales of €38.3 million in 2006.