BEMUS CONSTRUCTION SERVICES LIMITED (07855650) — Risk Analysis

1. Risk Rating: HIGH

The company is recorded with a status of Liquidation and has ceased meeting its statutory filing obligations. This represents the most severe category of counterparty risk: any equity interest is likely to be valueless, and creditor recovery will depend entirely on asset realisations within the insolvency process. The only scenario in which this assessment would soften is if the liquidation proves to be a solvent members' voluntary winding-up, which cannot be confirmed from the available data.

Note: the dataset contains an internal inconsistency — a flag indicating the company is not in liquidation, against a headline status of "Liquidation". The status field should be treated as the primary record and verified directly.

2. Key Concerns

1. Liquidation status. The company is being wound up. Unless this is a solvent voluntary procedure, shareholder value is effectively nil and unsecured creditors face uncertain, likely partial, recovery. This single fact overrides all historical financial performance.

2. Statutory filing failures. Accounts (due March 2021) and the confirmation statement (due January 2021) are both overdue. Cessation of filings is consistent with the onset of formal insolvency proceedings and removes any current financial visibility for external parties.

3. Stale and incomplete financial data. The most recent balance sheet figures available are for the year ended March 2016, even though accounts were last made up to March 2019 — a multi-year gap with no figures provided. The company moved from a reported £2.04m net asset position (2016) to liquidation within a few years; the cause and pace of that deterioration cannot be assessed from the available evidence. At the last detailed accounts, debtors of £2.9m represented roughly 57% of total assets — a concentration typical of construction contracting, but a material exposure if contracts or receivables soured.

3. Positive Indicators

These are historical only and do not reflect the current position:

• Strong reported growth, 2013–2016: net assets increased from £194k to £2.04m; cash rose from £300k to £1.49m; shareholders' funds grew approximately tenfold over three years.
• Positive working capital throughout the reported period: net current assets of £1.62m at March 2016, with modest long-term creditors (£227k).
• Substantial balance sheet at last detailed accounts: £5.13m in total assets suggests that, if books and records are reliable, asset realisations in the liquidation may generate some return for creditors — though this cannot be quantified from the data.

4. Due Diligence Notes

• Confirm the type and date of liquidation via Companies House insolvency filings and Gazette notices; identify the appointed liquidator and obtain the statement of affairs and any progress reports to establish expected creditor outcomes.
• Reconcile the data inconsistency between the company status and the liquidation flag before relying on either.
• Obtain the accounts made up to March 2019 (apparently filed but absent from this dataset) to narrow the information gap and identify when deterioration began.
• Check for winding-up petitions and judgments — HMRC petitions are common in construction sector failures — and establish the position of any secured or preferential creditors.
• Assess the quality of the 2016 figures cautiously: the company claimed small company audit exemption, so the historical accounts were unaudited and carry limited external assurance.
• Review the liquidator's reported investigations once available, including whether any pre-liquidation transactions are being examined; no conclusions should be drawn on this from the current data.
• Governance structure: the company has a single current director who is also the person with significant control (50–75% shareholding), with a current secretary also recorded — a concentrated control structure typical of owner-managed businesses.