Amelia goes into receivership

LONDON -- In mid-December, UK financial software firm London Bridge Software forced Amelia Financial Systems into receivership, former Amelia director, Jerry Wilkinson said.

According to Wilkinson, London-based operational risk management software company Amelia was forced into receivership when London Bridge Software called a loan it had made to Amelia on a "technicality". Wilkinson maintains London Bridge wanted to take control of OR2Q, Amelia’s Web-based operational risk management software, and "the easiest way to do that was to take the company into receivership and then take the intellectual property rights (IPR) of the product".

London Bridge made the loan in June 2002 as part of an overall package, which included acquiring a 19% stake in Amelia. London Bridge corporate development manager, Craig Preston, said there were three tranches to the loan, with mutually agreed conditions that needed to be met before the second two tranches could be drawn down.

"Amelia came to us requesting the second tranche without having met any of the conditions that needed to be put in place," Preston said. London Bridge considered waving these conditions but was not satisfied it could recover money on Amelia’s business plan, he said.

"We then took the necessary advice from our professional advisors and offered them [Amelia] the opportunity to repay the loan, and when they couldn’t we were forced to appoint receivership," he said.

Preston confirmed that London Bridge had acquired the IPR to OR2Q, after the receiver put it on general offer. Preston said there were some interested parties, although he didn’t know how many had bid for the product IPR.

But, Wilkinson said the receiver only opened OR2Q to general bids for "a short period of time, which gave no one an opportunity to bid sensibly for it".

London Bridge was founded in 1987, and has more than 1,000 customers worldwide typically using its credit risk management, customer relationship management and core banking systems software and services. UK clients include Lloyds TSB and insurance company Royal and Sun Alliance.

-- Joseph Radford