Trevor Osborne (pictured left) has had his ups and downs. But just-filed results for the 12 months to September 2008 show the former chairman of Speyhawk, now in his mid-sixties, is ticking along well enough.
Those with long memories will recall Speyhawk going bust in 1993 owing the banks £360m.
Bitter bankers with long memories still recall the after dinner speech in which Osborne made a joke about how he could not have achieved so much without their help. Clang.
He bounced back, ending up in an unlikely joint venture with consulting engineers Pell Frischmann called Hawk. That ended in a terrible legal fight over profit sharing with Dr Wilem Frischmann, which Osborne lost in 1998. He was forced to issue a public apology and hand his stake in the business to Frischmann.
For the last 10 years or so The Trevor Osborne Property Group has generally stuck to developing hotels and the like in genteel spots like Oxford, Bath and Buxton. The accounts show investment properties valued by Osborne himself in September 2008 at £49m
The good news is those properties only cost £32m. The bad news is that development activities pushed the bank overdraft up from £31m to £41m in the 12 months to last September. Even so, an £8m gap between assets and overdraft doesn't seem that bad.
Group net asset value may have got better or worse in the last 10 months, who knows? But, bankers, well, they do have long memories. One persuaded Osborne to sign a £1.39m personal guarantee against the company overdraft.
Leave a comment
What a user pic? Get a Gravatar!