THE managing director of a former company that closed owing more than £200,000 says he has been made a "scapegoat" and vowed to "keep his brand alive".

As previously reported Diglis-based SME Broker Services International went into administration in January with managing director Alex Nicholls setting up a new phoenix company SME Broker Services.

This week we revealed a creditors list is now on Companies House which shows the firm owed a total of £220,954 to 16 different creditors before its collapse, including £100,000 to HMRC.

Mr Nicholls has now provided a statement which says:

 

"The vast majority of our clients are commercial energy companies, as depicted on the home page of our website.

"As such our clients were directly impacted by the pandemic because it meant that businesses weren’t open and as such weren’t using energy like before. Nonetheless we still kept 54 staff in jobs (at our height) during two years of a pandemic, something that many bigger and better business people than me have failed to do and they’ve failed while in millions of debt.

"Because I’m in Worcester rather than London or Birmingham, it becomes newsworthy.

"We were then hit by the energy crisis which began in September of last year, this meant our clients were tightening their belts even further or going bust left, right and centre. Moreover, our investor that I sourced as a result of the crisis backed out at the very last minute, due to him being the owner of an energy firm himself.

"My defence sounds like and will be seen as an excuse, but that doesn’t mean that it is not valid.

"Naturally people look for someone to blame in an event such as this one and the owner of a fallen business is always that scapegoat - it’s not as if I wanted it to happen.

"The government always write off debts and pay out redundancies for failed limited companies and ‘SME Broker Services International’ was a limited company.

"I have worked my fingers to the bone to keep my business afloat and we are still trading under the similar name of ‘SME Broker Services Group’ since December.

"We are in the same building in Diglis and we have the same personnel, those that have stuck by me are still in jobs, 10 of them, the 13 who left were offered to stay on at the new entity but sadly declined.

"We will come back stronger for it, we continue to defy the odds, we are dauntless, daring and determined and we go again.

"I have been getting a lot of hate but I put myself in the firing line so it comes with the territory, the territory of being willing enough to run a business in this economy and my mental health has suffered enormously, but I’m still here, I’m showing my face and I’m here to take the backlash.

 

READ MORE: Former Worcester company closed owing more than £200,000

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"It has and will fire me up to dig my heels in and keep this brand alive, like I have done for six years - I never had anything given to me, I’m the son of a postman and a cleaner and I do it for them, my family, my friends and my employees.

"Thank you for taking the time to read my comments and any further issues with me should be taken up directly instead of in the media."