Black Sheep Brewery: Administration shafted shareholders like me - Yorkshire Post Letters

May I thank your paper and the Editor for your continued support of the shareholders of the previous Black Sheep Brewery in your articles and editorial dated 4/1 and 6/1 and also your updates regarding the new company Black Sheep Brewing Company Ltd.

I read with interest the article in your sister paper the Harrogate Advertiser 18/1 regarding the new Black Sheep investing a £1m in the brewing and packaging departments.

This is cold comfort to people like myself as one of the 1,234 shareholders in the old company who as creditors along with various other companies and the government (i.e. tax payers) are owed between £4-5m. The remaining three directors placed the company into administration without any proper consultation with the shareholders.

My holding in the company began with a few hundred shares when the company was formed in 1992. I continued to invest over the following 30 years where I attended every AGM and promoted the company's products when I could throughout that time. My holding when the company went into administration was some 7,000 shares.

The company was subsequently sold by the administrators Teneo to Breal Capital for some £5m in May. Breal formed a new company Black Sheep Brewing Ltd and the three remaining directors of the old company took up similar positions in the new brewing company.

The so-called pre-pack administration deal is nothing but glorified daylight robbery. I am glad that most of the jobs of the employees in the company were saved, but I question how the directors are fit and proper persons to run the new company.

At the last AGM there were 1,234 shareholders, 56, of which including myself, held 5,001 or more shares. Most of us are not rich, but are hard working loyal people, including employees of the old company, farmers, licensees and local tradesmen.

Coincidentally the CEO owned no shares in the company at this time. The MD and Export Director owned 6,256 and 11,050 shares respectively.

In my view these deals should be outlawed.