The Biggin Hill firm's statement of affairs is public: £6.15m owed against £64,296 to pay it. Seventeen staff, HMRC and local suppliers are in the queue.

JetMS Completions Ltd owed £6,151,063.86 when it stopped trading, and expects to realise £64,296.21 to pay it. The aircraft interiors firm’s statement of affairs is now public at Companies House, two weeks after it was filed. (Companies House, JetMS Completions Ltd, statement of affairs)

The document is the one we promised to report when the Biggin Hill company was wound up in August. It was signed by director Stefan Chevalier on 28 July, the day after the date it describes, and reached the register on 21 August. Until this week it was marked as processing and could not be read.

The estimated deficiency as regards creditors is £6,086,767.65. Add the company’s £325,760 of share capital and the deficiency as regards members reaches £6,412,527.65. (Companies House, JetMS Completions Ltd, statement of affairs)

Who is in the queue

The statement splits the claims into classes, in the order the law pays them:

  • Employees come first. Wage arrears and holiday pay of £32,933.95, plus £7,846.21 owed to pension schemes.
  • HM Revenue and Customs comes second, with £87,602.15. The creditor list shows £66,143.35 of it as PAYE and National Insurance and £21,458.80 as VAT.
  • Unsecured creditors come last, with £6,022,681.55. That is £5,299,407.42 owed to connected parties, £573,767.34 to trade and expense creditors, and a further £149,506.79 to the company’s 17 employees.

The £64,296.21 the liquidators expect to realise covers the employees’ preferential claims in full, with £23,516.05 to spare. It does not cover HMRC, which the statement shows £64,086.10 short. On the director’s own figures, everyone below HMRC in the queue gets nothing.

Chart of JetMS Completions' statement of affairs: connected parties owed £5,299,407, trade and expense creditors £573,767, 17 employees £190,287, HMRC £87,602. Total claims of £6,151,064 against assets estimated to realise £64,296, a deficiency of £6,412,528 as regards members
Chart by Sevenoaks Online, from the company's statement of affairs.

A creditor list 184 entries long

Where Waypoint Aerotec’s statement listed eight creditors, JetMS Completions’ runs to nine pages and 184 entries. The largest by far is ASG Finance DAC of Dublin, at £4,644,912.36. The list does not mark which entries make up the £5.3m of connected-party claims, but group names are scattered through it: JetMS Holdings of Dublin (£13,894.03), JetMS Interiors (£142,933.51) and Avia Solutions Group (£146,300.72). JetMS Holdings Limited is also the company’s sole shareholder, holding all 3,257,600 ordinary shares. (Companies House, JetMS Completions Ltd, statement of affairs)

The airport is in the queue too:

  • Biggin Hill Hangar Company, £308,463.66
  • The London Borough of Bromley, the local authority for the airport site, £127,368.00
  • Biggin Hill Business Aviation Limited, £99,114.20

So are small firms much closer to home. Carlile Aviation Services Ltd of Crockham Hill is owed £6,208.00, Kewell Converters Limited of Edenbridge £1,113.54, and A Shine Cleaning of Biggin Hill £944.18. Dozens of entries are recorded at a nominal £1.00.

Why so little will be realised

The gap between what the company owned on paper and what the liquidators expect to get for it is stark. The statement values rights to use the hangar at £396,200.20 and land at £759,375.13, both estimated to realise nothing. Fixtures and fittings of £103,346.15 also realise nothing, and plant and machinery of £122,608.02 just £2,300. Book debts of £172,892.28 are expected to bring in £38,880.21. The rest is £12,000 for motor vehicles, £1,500 of stock and £3,786 of cash. (Companies House, JetMS Completions Ltd, statement of affairs)

The company’s last audited accounts, for 2024, recorded an average of 49 staff during that year. The statement of affairs lists 17 employees as creditors at the end.

The picture across both companies

JetMS Completions and Waypoint Aerotec were wound up at the same Teams meeting on 5 August, with the same joint liquidators, Stuart Morton and Matthew Howard of Price Bailey LLP. Waypoint’s statement of affairs, published in August, showed £486,584 owed against £11,443 to pay it. Together the two Biggin Hill companies’ statements now record claims of £6.64m and expected realisations of £75,739.

What it means for those owed money

If you worked for either company, the employee claims above do not depend on the company’s assets alone. You can claim redundancy pay, unpaid wages, holiday pay and notice pay from the National Insurance Fund, using the case reference number the liquidator provides. (GOV.UK, Your rights if your employer is insolvent)

Creditors’ contact point at the liquidators is unchanged: Graeme Douglas at Price Bailey LLP, on 01603 709330 or Graeme.Douglas@pricebailey.co.uk. (The Gazette, Appointment of Liquidators, JetMS Completions Ltd)

Our earlier coverage: the first report of the liquidation meetings, the appointment of the liquidators and the district’s August insolvency notices.

Sources

Image: Entrance to London Biggin Hill Airport by David Anstiss, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph.