On the 14 July 1997 the winding-up petition was duly dismissed and a settlement was reached with the Customs and Excise. Normal trading was restored thereafter.

Whilst this was occurring discussions were still in progress with Advanced Metals and their advisers with regard to merging our respective businesses.

Julian Wood of Parker Wood (Chartered Accountants & Licensed Insolvency Practitioners of Stanmore Middlesex

I was recommended by the Taylors Partnership and Advanced Metals International to meet their associate, Julian Wood, senior partner of Parker Wood and this I did in June of 1997.

They referred to him as a “friendly Insolvency Practitioner”?

His advice during a meeting in June of 1997 was to voluntarily liquidate Priority through his firm. He advised me to do the following to ensure the sale of my business to Advanced Metals International.

1. To secure nominations/proxies from creditors of my company for his appointment to allow the sale to be completed to Advanced.
2. That if appointed, no advertisement in local newspapers in Portsmouth would be placed to the detriment of the new combined business and its customers/suppliers.
3. That subject to his appointment, a creditors meeting would be convened the day after a bank holiday to ensure minimum attendance of objecting creditors to his appointment.

My aim was to ensure that all creditors were paid over the next twelve months by inflating their selling prices for ongoing trade. In this way they would recover their losses. Most creditors were personally known to me and were friends, as the stainless steel fastener market is particularly specialized and they were familiar to my twenty five years in the trade. Crown debts would be part covered by the company’s existing work in progress.