Around 95% of the money owed by Railbookers Ltd was to foreign exchange providers, some of whom have raised questions about the reasons behind the company’s failure.
US-based Yankee Leisure Group (YLG) paid £157,000 for the business and assets. It now operates the website under a different company, Railbookers UK Trading Ltd.
A pre-pack sale is when a company enters administration but is then sold almost immediately afterwards. These types of deals have drawn criticism in the past for cutting out creditors from the process.
Company records for Railbookers Ltd suggest that there were 105 unsecured creditors who collectively were owed £8.3 million. However, so far only 27 have stepped forward with claims totalling £5.7 million.
While administrators from James Cooper Kreston were keen to stress that a detailed investigation had yet to be made, they did point out that a number of the foreign exchange providers had cited “representations from the directors, which they say they relied on when agreeing to provide the company with credit lines”.
TTG contacted a number of Railbookers’ biggest creditors, but none came back with a comment.
Meanwhile, the circumstances surrounding Railbookers’ collapse were laid out in a report released by the administrators this month.
Almost a year ago the operator brought in advisors to try and find a buyer. YLG emerged as an interested party but at the time no deal was achieved.
In February “acute cash flow pressures” led Railbookers to seek advice from insolvency practitioners.
On February 26, an offer was made by YLG for the business. Administrators were appointed on March 4 with the sale of assets completed shortly afterwards.
The new owners agreed to take on the existing bookings and the deal was supported by the Travel Trust Association, of which Railbookers was a member.
Railbookers was founded in 2003 and prior to its fall into administration was owned and run by its three founding directors: Andy Brabin, Kevin Tasker and Sarah Yandell.
The three also owned another company, Travel Definitions Ltd.
The CAA reported that this business ceased trading in March 2016.
Avril Hurd, group operations and risk director at The Travel Network Group, said: “The Travel Network Group has supported the new directors of Railbookers UK Trading Ltd. The trust account was unaffected by the closure of the former business and all Railbookers’ passengers, who had booked with a TTA member, continue to travel as usual.”
