Border Rugby files for liquidation

Cape Town - The commercial leg of the Border Rugby Union, Border Rugby (Pty) Ltd, has filed for liquidation. 

The union confirmed the news on Thursday. 

According to a release, the decision was "unavoidable" and that it was completely voluntary after having sought expert advice. 

The statement read as follows:  

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.

According to the Dispatch Live website, the "applicant's liabilities outweighed its assets by more than R11 million."

There was also an outstanding debt of more than R110 000 owed to security company, Red Alert.