Awards – the ultimate farce

As most regular readers will know I consider the various annual factoring awards to be little more than a joke for a variety of reasons but one Factoring Blog reader very kindly sent me a link to what is probably the biggest farce to date as it seems that a factoring broker called Fund Invoice has been shortlisted for Small Business of the Year in the 1066 Business Awards of 2016

Eligibility for this prestigious award is in their own words:-

This award is open to all businesses with less than 10 employees that can demonstrate exceptional performance, growth and market leadership.

Whilst FundInvoice LLP may well qualify as being within the two year cut off it most certainly doesn’t fall within the spirit of the rules as the company was formed in September 2013 just two weeks prior to it’s previous incarnation Cashflow Acceleration Ltd being plunged into Administration owing a phenomenal amount of money to HMRC and with an equally large overdrawn directors loan account resulting in one of it’s husband and wife director team not only being made bankrupt but also being barred from holding a directorship for four years which is pretty serious stuff.

The liquidator’s report stated that they appointed accountants to try and reconstruct the company’s accounts from 2008 onwards to try and confirm the accuracy of the overdrawn directors loan which was in excess of £400,000 but in their own words “despite numerous attempts to collate the necessary information to reconstruct the accounts over an extended period of time this task has proved unsuccessful.

I have no idea who it was that nominated FundInvoice LLP for the Small Business of the Year award and I’m not cynical enough to think that it had anything to do with the fact that they were sponsoring one of the other awards but whilst I feel that many of the other factoring award winners have been unjustified and more to do with lobbying than merit in this case I feel that it is entirely wrong that the phoenix of a company that screwed over us taxpayers so royally should be eligible to tell others that they are the Small Business of the Year – that is if they actually win