'Accident' creditors seek liquidation

About 2,500 people lost their jobs when The Accident Group went bust

Creditors of The Accident Group have voted to put the company into liquidation.

The Manchester-based firm collapsed in May owing more than £100m and leaving more than 2,500 staff without jobs.

Creditors - including representatives of the sacked workers as well as banks and other financial institutions - met the administrators PriceWaterhouseCoopers on Friday.

They voted unanimously to put the firm into liquidation and liquidators will be appointed on 21 October.

It is believed they will be able to shed more light on why the company failed and investigate £11.8m of dividends paid out to the firm's directors over the past two years.

The interests of all of the creditors... are best served by an immediate move towards liquidation Alec McFadden, sacked workers representative

It has also emerged that about 75% of The Accident Group was owned by the Leverington Trust, which has operations in the British Virgin Islands and Luxembourg, where banking regulations are more secretive than the UK.

It has not yet been discovered who is behind the firm.

Alec McFadden, who represents the sacked workers, said: "I thought the situation was bad on 30 May, I thought it was horrendous on 14 August [the day before the original creditors meeting].

"It's about a million times worse now because the more you go into it, the more you see what's involved.

"The interests of all of the creditors and of the population of this country and the financial institutions of this country and their reputations are best served by an immediate move towards liquidation."