UK tax authority HMRC has issued a winding up petition to tech event CogX, according to court records accessed via Caseboard. Winding up petitions are used by creditors to force debtors into liquidation if they fail to pay debt the creditors claim they’re owed.
It follows Sifted reporting that suppliers were turning to the courts and debt collectors to recoup money owed to them by the business, which is one of the UK’s best-known tech events.
The case was filed to London’s Commercial Court on Monday this week.
“Our plan to scale post-Covid was unsuccessful, and it is no secret that 2023 was a very difficult financial year for us,” a CogX spokesperson told Sifted. “As a result, some payments were delayed and we have had no choice but to ask creditors to wait until the completion of a funding round in November.”
The spokesperson added the company is in discussions with HMRC. “This amount will be settled on the [first] close of funding already lined up and we do not expect it to impact CogX’s plans,” they said.
A spokesperson for HMRC said it takes a “supportive approach to dealing with customers who have tax debts” and works with them to find the right solution.
Mounting debts
As part of previous reporting, Sifted spoke to five suppliers who were owed money by CogX. A sixth supplier told Sifted that they’d been paid £10k that they were owed, but nearly a year late and only after initiating court proceedings against CogX.
One said they had resorted to hiring a debt collection agency. Another supplier, which Sifted first spoke to in April, said they had filed a small claim against CogX in July.
CogX had previously said suppliers would be repaid after the company concluded an event in Los Angeles in May this year.
There are eight court orders, dating back to 2022, for CogX to pay creditors money — ranging from £2,000 -15k — with six issued since the start of this year, according to TrustOnline, a service set up by the UK’s Ministry of Justice to provide access to court records.
Those orders are called county court judgments — which are issued by a court when it has formally decided an entity owes another money — and are against CogX entities CogX Festival Ltd, CogX Events Ltd and CogX Ltd. As of September 18, those judgments were all classified as “unsatisfied”, meaning CogX has not provided proof of payment to the court.
CogX did not respond to specific cases when asked by Sifted in September.
What happens next?
A CogX spokesperson told Sifted that the company “anticipates” raising more than £5m, of which it says “just under £1m is already lined up”.
CogX said its growth plans include the rollout of a CogX app and the release of Proxxi AI, a “real-time knowledge network”. CogX founder Charlie Muirhead registered Proxxi as an entity in January this year.
CogX’s most recent event, a scaled-back leadership summit at the Royal Albert Hall in London, was profitable, the spokesperson said.
“We know that delayed payments can have a profound impact and we apologise unreservedly for the delays.”
If a creditor decides to continue with a winding up petition and it’s accepted, the case is then heard in court. If the court decides the debtor is unable to pay, it issues a winding up order, forcing a company into liquidation.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/cogx-winding-up-petition-hmrc/
