BB’S COFFEE Muffins Holdings, a UK company ultimately owned by billionaire businessman Denis O’Brien and others, has written off or written down investments totalling £5.6 million (€6.7 million), according to accounts filed recently.
BB’s Coffee Muffins, a subsidiary company which is now called BB’s Coffee and Muffins Realisations, went into administration on October 6th, last.
Sources said it came out of administration the following day but with its number of UK stores reduced by almost a third. Fresh investment has since been made.
The company is the main trading arm of the Limerick-based cafe franchising group, which continues to operate. The approximately 75 brand outlets, 25 of which are in Ireland, employ approximately 500 people.
Limerick-based businessman Kieran Walshe, who held half the shares in the group’s ultimate parent, TBL Holdings, disposed of those shares in the year to the end of September last. He has also resigned as a director of companies in the group.
Mr Walshe’s shares were taken on by Baycliffe, while the other shares in the company are held by David Sykes, a stockbroker and an adviser to Mr O’Brien. A charge against TBL was registered in November in the names of Mr Sykes and Baycliffe, with the latter having an address in the Isle of Man.
Requests yesterday for a comment from the group – Mr Walshe, Mr O’Brien and Mr Sykes – met with no response.
The accounts for TBL are overdue, according to the UK Companies House website.
BB’s Coffee and Muffins Holdings had accumulated losses of £7.9 million at the end of September 2009, according to its accounts.
It wrote off £2.42 million as a result of BB’s Coffee and Muffins going into administration and wrote down a further £3.2 million arising from its investment in a related subsidiary, BB’s Coffee and Muffins Europe.
BB’s Holdings, an immediate parent of BB’s Coffee and Muffins Holdings, wrote off an investment of £589,293. It is majority owned by TBL Holdings along with some other investors.
BB’s Coffee Muffins Europe, another holding company in the group, had intellectual property of £1 million recorded in its accounts for the year to the end of September 2009.
The property represents the amount paid to BB’s Coffee Muffins Australia for the BB’s Coffee Muffin brand. The amount had been written off but was re-introduced in 2006 given the “successful trading” of the trading company over recent years. An entry in the accounts records a “shareholder’s loan” of £450,000 owed to Mr O’Brien at the year’s end.
Mr Walshe was chief executive of Irlasto, a company that facilitated Irish investment in post-Soviet Moscow in the 1990s. The High Court was told in 1998 it had to close when it was “run out” of Moscow by its Russian partners.
Fianna Fáil TD Frank Fahey was involved with a hairdressing salon that formed part of the Irlasto group of businesses. He said the salon was owned by his wife.
