Hortor collapse: Workers owed thousands by failed Yorkshire firm reveal £2.3m legal threat, secret recordings and bank statement evidence

A Companies House filing by liquidators Smith & Barnes Insolvency Practice states there is no money available to return to 88 trade creditors collectively owed £2.4m.

The firm is ultimately owned by businessman Grant Nicholson, who last year was made subject to a court order barring him from selling his £3.5m house in Harrogate, two racehorses and a Porsche 911 motorcar. York Crown Court confirmed this week the order remains in operation.

Mr Nicholson has not been charged with any criminal offence and has denied any wrongdoing. There is no suggestion the collapse of Hortor and the court order are connected.

Two self-employed workers affected by the collapse of Hortor have now come forward. Richard Waite’s limited company Moorview Systems is owed more than £63,000, while Jon Richelieu-Booth’s firm Phoenix Evolution is owed over £12,500.

The pair said Hortor had months of payment problems prior to its collapse and have emails, recordings and bank statements indicating two still-trading parent companies of the firm provided money towards debts they were owed. They believe the still-trading companies should be viewed as liable for the debts of Hortor.

Mr Waite said he knows several other creditors. “People are pretty disgusted and not in a good way. I’m owed one of the biggest amounts of money and have been up and down with it all. We want our money but we also want to make sure this can’t happen to other people.”

Companies House records state Hortor Limited is controlled by Hortor Group. Hortor Group itself is controlled by Pharaoh Capital. The latter company is solely controlled by Grant Nicholson.

Mr Nicholson said Pharaoh was “simply the shareholder” in Hortor and any questions about the company needed to be directed to the liquidators. He said Mr Waite and Mr Richelieu-Booth were “under defamatory proceedings” in relation to their “wrong” allegations. Both men said they are unaware of any legal action.

Smith & Barnes did not respond to requests for comment.

Legal demand for £2.3m sent over LinkedIn posts

A now-collapsed Leeds recruitment company demanded millions of pounds in damages from an IT contractor after he posted on LinkedIn about its non-payment problems.

Jon Richelieu-Booth was threatened with legal action by recruitment firm Hortor last August after making multiple LinkedIn posts about the firm’s problems in providing payment to his company and others for work they had carried out.

He had been working on a National Highways IT project relating to the Dartford Tunnel between July 2022 and August 2023 and said problems with payments had begun in early 2023 for him and others.

Mr Richelieu-Booth said he only decided to start posting on LinkedIn about the problems after months of unsuccessful attempts to get Hortor to pay what was owed.

He said a demand for him to pay £2.3m in damages for posts about the company, which went into liquidation last month owing £2.4m to 88 trade creditors, made him feel suicidal.

Mr Richelieu-Booth said: “I did consider killing myself that weekend. But I spoke to a solicitor and spoke to my friend and they said they are trying to get you to bend. So I calmed down and I got on with it.”

A letter sent to Mr Richelieu-Booth on August 1 by a Hortor Group finance director said: “It has come to our attention that you are spreading defamatory information relating to Hortor Limited via social media channels. We must make you aware that you are to cease this immediately.

“We are in the process of calculating the loss and damage this has caused to the business, which we expect to be in the region of £2,320,100. We demand that you take down, on demand, all posts relating to Hortor. Failure to do so will mean we issue libel proceedings against you, personally.

“We therefore ask that you undertake to pay this balance on demand. Failure to do so will lead to litigation proceedings against your company, as well as you personally where we will use all our powers to recover the funds due from you to us. We highly advise you to take independent legal advice as a matter of urgency.”

On August 12, a petition to wind up Hortor was filed by a creditor of the company called Wright IT Services.

Mr Richelieu-Booth said that after he became aware of the winding-up petition in early September, he was contacted by employees of Hortor’s parent company Pharaoh Capital who suggested a payment plan.

He then recorded two conversations he had with a Pharaoh Capital employee about the matter to protect himself in light of the threatened legal action.

He said: “I felt I had to protect myself from any potential blowback and I wanted to have something I could refer to in future conversations. I knew they would not agree to me recording the calls but in light of what had happened in regard to the payments, I didn’t trust them.”

The recordings have been shared with The Yorkshire Post. In the first, the employee apologised for the lack of response to Mr Richelieu-Booth in the time before his LinkedIn posts.

The worker said: “We’ve got a number of different businesses within the Pharaoh group so we are not involved in the day-to-day. When we find out there is a problem, we have to go and sort it. This is one where it is quite embarrassing. We assumed that people would be doing the right thing. Unfortunately it really appears they weren’t.”

After Mr Richelieu-Booth said he was withdrawing his support for the winding-up petition on the basis a payment plan would provide a better chance of him getting his money back, the Pharaoh Capital employee said: “It is important that we are candid. If we’re in a position where unfortunately we do have to go to a liquidator, it is out of our hands who we pay.

“The right thing to do is pay the people who have done the work. [We want] to keep Hortor going from a commercial point of view but actually it is about doing the right thing.”

When Mr Richelieu-Booth raised the issue of the legal threat he had received, the employee said: “From our side, no action has been taken I can assure you of that. Hopefully we can put that to bed.”

In the second recorded conversation talking about when payments would be made, the same Pharaoh worker said: “I will obviously ensure that payment is made first thing on Monday and hopefully this is the start of a much smoother process between what technically is yourself and Hortor but really is between yourself and Pharaoh.”

Mr Richelieu-Booth has shown The Yorkshire Post bank statements showing a transfer of £3,510 in September from Pharaoh Group and two payments of £2,494 from Hortor Group, the immediate parent company of Hortor Limited, made in November and December of the same year.

Another affected contractor who has also gone public about the impact of the Hortor situation is Richard Waite.

He had done work via Hortor since 2019 and said he had no issues with payments until March 2023, shortly after the business had been taken over.

He said he also agreed to a payment plan with a Pharaoh Capital employee and has shared a bank statement from his company Moorview Systems showing a £9,083 payment from Hortor Group, the still trading parent company of Hortor Limited, made in September 2024.

But Mr Waite said a further agreed payment for the following month was missed.

He has also shown The Yorkshire Post an email exchange he had with a Pharaoh Capital employee in December in regard to the missed payment plan, setting up a call to recalculate repayments for the money his company was owed for work done for Hortor Limited.

Pharaoh Capital owner Grant Nicholson did not wish to comment but said that Pharaoh was “simply the shareholder” in Hortor Limited and all questions about the latter company should be directed to the liquidators dealing with the case. He said Mr Waite and Mr Richelieu-Booth were “under defamatory proceedings” in relation to their “wrong” allegations.

Both men told The Yorkshire Post they are unaware of any legal action against them. The liquidators, Smiths & Barnes Insolvency Practice, did not respond to requests for comment.

Companies House filings show Grant Nicholson became a director of Hortor Limited on February 8, 2023. The same day also saw Pharaoh Capital take control of Hortor Group.

On April 30, 2023 Hortor Group took control of Hortor Limited and in January 2024 Mr Nicholson stepped down as a company director of both Hortor firms. He remains in control of Pharaoh.

Pharaoh-controlled Hortor Group had been scheduled to publish its accounts by March 31 this year but they are overdue. A compulsory strike-off notice was issued for Hortor Group earlier this month.

Grant Nicholson is shown as being owed £1.1m by Hortor Limited in the list of creditors.

Another former firm of Mr Nicholson’s is called Houli Dragonfly Capital Limited, which went into liquidation last year. A statement of affairs report from August 2024 said Houli Dragonfly Capital owed £14.2m to 42 trade and expense creditors. Mr Nicholson is owed £3.7m as a creditor.

Another one of his companies, Planet-U Energy Limited, went into administration in 2021. Unsecured creditors were owed £4.7m by the company but there was only £245,583 to share between them. They each received 5.21p for every pound owed.

Pharaoh Capital’s last published accounts for the year to June 30, 2023, reported revenue of £20.6m after completing one deal with its report stating “the group focused on reinvesting cash generated from these revenues into building strong management teams”. It reported a net profit of £668,000. From the remaining profit, £600,000 was paid in dividends.

The firm’s latest accounts had been scheduled to be filed by June 30 this year but are currently overdue.