A PRELIMINARY report has found Illawarra Hawks Proprietary Limited was $2.4 million in debt when placed into administration in April, with players and staff owed an estimated $750,000 in entitlements.
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They are among the revelations in the report prepared by administrator Michael Jones, which shows the club suffered losses of more than $1.6 million in the two years after Simon Stratford became sole owner of the club.
A former minority partner, Stratford took sole ownership of the club in March 2017 when former majority owner James Spencely relinquished his controlling stake in the company he created in 2015.
Having sustained "ongoing losses since 2016" the report shows the club ran at a loss of more than $1 million in 2018 and more than $630,000 in 2019.
Despite an initial spike in revenue due to the arrival of NBA Draft Prospect LaMelo Ball, the club had lost more than $98,000 for the current year when Stratford placed the club into voluntary administration on April 2.
It followed unsuccessful attempts from Stratford to sell the club to potential buyers in the preceding months after sinking more than $1.5 million of his own money into the company this financial year.
The report cited poor ticket sales, injuries to key players and a lack of recent success in the NBL as contributing factors to the club's financial woes, as well increased staffing and administration costs.
It also stated that any value in the club's NBL license "evaporated" once it was stripped by the league when the company was placed into administration.
That process saw all player and staff employment contracts terminated, with around $750,000 in entitlements, such as redundancy, leave and Superannuation still owing.
Should the company go into liquidation, former staff stand to lose a huge chunk of the money owed them, with the report claiming an "optimistic" liquidation scenario would see them recover just 20 cents in the dollar.
It's not the first time club staff have had to fight for such entitlements, with the club first reported to ATO over outstanding Super in late 2018. It was ultimately resolved but required the intervention of the NBL and Players Association.
After taking back the Hawks license, the NBL claimed it was in discussions to "address the issue of any outstanding player entitlements from the 2019-20 season," but administrators are yet to receive any correspondence from the league to that effect.
Other debts include more than $500,000 owed to the ATO while Stratford, the largest unsecured creditor, is owed almost $1.5 million in unsecured claims.
The report also states the club "may have traded whilst insolvent" since mid 2018 or earlier, offering a preliminary estimate of an insolvent trading claim "in the vicinity of $768,426."
That claim could be be investigated further should the company be placed into liquidation which, as no Deed of Company Arrangement has been proposed by Stratford or any other party, is the only realistic option.
Should that occur at the next creditor's meeting on May 18, the Hawks' new owners will need to create a new company with the Illawarra Hawks' intellectual property transferred to the new entity via the NBL which is still considering ownership bids.