State of Border Rugby

Oct 20 • General News • 2102 Views • Comments Off on State of Border Rugby

ARTICLE IN THE DAILY DISPATCH CREATES CONFUSION AND MISLEADS

It is a fact that the Directors of the Border Rugby (Pty) Ltd decided to put the company under voluntary liquidation.

The reasons for this have been stated in the papers are for the public to see and there is nothing to hide.

It is, however, worth stating that all the governance processes towards arriving at the decision have been followed and expert advice has been engaged to assist the directors to arrive at what was an unavoidable decision.

It is worth noting too, that the trigger for the action was not a hostile creditor seeking to obtain its due monies. It was instead a voluntary action taken after careful consideration. Amongst the factors taken into consideration, inter alia,

Unless there is private equity, in partnership with the Union, the Company is not a viable option.
Its existence in a situation where there is a single source of income, it serves no commercial or economic purpose because the Union and the Company derive their income from a puny income. All it does is “to spread poverty”
The Union, after the breakdown of relations with its erstwhile private equity partner, returned the functions that had been divested to the Company. These were players, coaches and the ground staff. Once this had been done, the purpose of the Company ceased to exist.
In its life up to the point of the decision, it had obviously incurred costs of various nature. The Union took responsibility for discharging the obligations to creditors and negotiated terms of payment to all identified and declared creditors.
We have declared the state of the Company to all the relevant authorities and in fact the process of liquidation which require that all potential creditors are made aware is but one part of the process of informing them of the state of the company and the intentions of the directors.

RED ALERT

The Red Alert debt came to our attention only about two months ago via our audit firm. We had no knowledge of it in the three years we were attending to the affairs of both the Union and the Company. It will have to be looked at and allocated to the relevant entity. The principle we have always held is that any legitimate debt will be honoured.

SOURCE OF CONFUSION

On the day that the article was published we have to field an avalanche of calls from creditors with whom we had over the past 3 years built a sound business reputation. Additionally, other media houses have been alarmed by the reports of this liquidation. Our players and the workers have become distressed and therefore we believe that it is important to issue an explanatory statement to clear the confusion.

We do so as follows:

All employees’ contracts are held with the Border Rugby Union, since 2014 and are good standing and in sound repute. There is nothing foreseen that could affect the Union obligations to any of the employees.
- there is not one employee nor is there any contract of any form with any employee that is held with the erstwhile Border Rugby (Pty) Ltd
all existing credit agreements with third parties are with the Border Rugby Union and we have no reason nor basis to believe that we will not be able to meet all our obligations during this year and in the foreseeable future.
- it has to be said that BRU has cleared all its arrear debts and has met its obligations to all statutory parties and therefore is good for all its obligations.
The BR (Pty) Ltd was a separate entity and has not operated, by way of entering into contracts of any nature with players or employees.

We therefore would like to re-assure all rugby publics and commercial interests that their dealings will be prejudiced by the application of liquidation for Border Rugby (Pty) Ltd.

We regret the distress that the report may have caused to the commercial and sporting interests that have dealt with the Union.