6th August, 2010
A foremost Nigerian mattress and bed materials manufacturing company, Vono Nigeria Plc, may be liquidated any time from now as Bank PHB has filed a petition before a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos, South West, Nigeria urging the court to wind up the company in order to defray a debt of N350 million.
Joining forces with Bank PHB to wind up Vono Products Nigeria Plc is another company, Nagode Industry Limited, which claimed that it supplied raw materials amounting to N54,432,828.00 to the company but it has not been paid the said sum.
In the statement of the petition of Bank PHB, the bank alleged that sometime in March, 2007, the company was offered various facilities amounting to N3 million while their relationship was codial.
However, the company has not been able to pay back the loan which amounted to N350,000,959.01 as at November 2009, despite the fact that the loan was restructured through a board resolution to do so in August 2009.
Therefore, the bank prayed the court that Vono Product Plc with registration number 2346 be wond up by the order of the provision of Section 409 (1) and 410 (1) of the Company and Allied Matters Act.
However, in a counter affidavit sworn to by Ojedapo Adebanjo, he claimed that the company secretary, Lekan Sanni said the property of the company valued at N1.8 billion has been put up for sale in order to offset the loan.
The new board put in place has set machinery in motion to source money from the capital market to repay the loan as approval has been obtained from the shareholders of the company during the last Annual General Meeting, AGM, held in September.
He further said that the company suffered a loss of N548,100,000 in the course of its business in 2008.
Presiding Justice Okon Abang has adjourned till 9 November, 2010 to commence hearing in the matter.