Fiona Wright at the end of her tether

Deref said :

IrishPete said :

And I firmly believe that any employer that isn’t holding employee entitlements in trust, is morally bankrupt even if they are not technically/legally bankrupt.

It’s theft, pure and simple, and should be dealt with as such.

I don’t know if it’s common to hold the employee entitlements in trust, but it should be required. Leave and long service leave are tricky to budget for, sick leave even more so. In fact a good manager/owner would require annual and LS leave to be taken when it falls due, as it costs more and more as people’s salaries increase with CPI but mainly as they progress up salary scales or get promoted.

IP

IrishPete said :

Robertson said :

I read the article – what an awful way to run a business – they spent bucketloads of borrowed cash refurbishing a function room at the NGA when they didn’t even have a written contract to provide services for the gallery nor even any written definition of how those services should be provided.

Doing business on a handshake is almost always a shockingly bad idea.

Like IP, I too am immensely gladdened to see that the administrator has paid themselves half a million dollars out of the business’s remaining million, leaving half a million to go towards the 3 million owed to creditors – including staff wages and super.

The article also said that the NGA reimbursed the cost of refurbishment. Another thing that doesn’t add up.

IP

The way I read that, by the time the NGA paid them for that, the banks had already decided to cut off the business’s supply of cash, which is what usually causes a business to crash. I suspect there was a lot of other careless spending going on that she doesn’t mention.

IrishPete said :

And I firmly believe that any employer that isn’t holding employee entitlements in trust, is morally bankrupt even if they are not technically/legally bankrupt.

It’s theft, pure and simple, and should be dealt with as such.

Robertson said :

I read the article – what an awful way to run a business – they spent bucketloads of borrowed cash refurbishing a function room at the NGA when they didn’t even have a written contract to provide services for the gallery nor even any written definition of how those services should be provided.

Doing business on a handshake is almost always a shockingly bad idea.

Like IP, I too am immensely gladdened to see that the administrator has paid themselves half a million dollars out of the business’s remaining million, leaving half a million to go towards the 3 million owed to creditors – including staff wages and super.

The article also said that the NGA reimbursed the cost of refurbishment. Another thing that doesn’t add up.

IP

I read the article – what an awful way to run a business – they spent bucketloads of borrowed cash refurbishing a function room at the NGA when they didn’t even have a written contract to provide services for the gallery nor even any written definition of how those services should be provided.

Doing business on a handshake is almost always a shockingly bad idea.

Like IP, I too am immensely gladdened to see that the administrator has paid themselves half a million dollars out of the business’s remaining million, leaving half a million to go towards the 3 million owed to creditors – including staff wages and super.

Businesses fail. It happens, all too often.

“It looks to me as if I’m the greatest liar in the world.”

Is that a Freudian slip? Did she actually mean it looks that way to other people, or is that how she really perceives herself?

I feel for her.

I think you need to have run your own business to understand where she likely to be coming from. If you haven’t, then you’re likely not qualified to hold much of an opinion.

Cash-flow can kill a profitable business. Growing businesses are especially vulnerable.

http://www.businesspundit.com/income-vs-cash-flow-why-growth-can-kill-your-business/

I don’t know the details of her business; but a businesses with high fixed outgoings (e.g. payroll) and peaky intermittent income (e.g. from large one off contracts to a limited number of clients) is vulnerable to cash-flow issues especially if one or more of those clients regularly don’t pay on time.

I read this in the Canberra Times today, and though it was pleasing to see a failed person not living in the lap of luxury, it does smell like there is something else going on.

My impression is that Ms Wright feels she is part of the Canberra royalty, and that she should be treated as such.

To blame one restaurant for the failure of a small restaurant empire sounds a bit rich to me, and somewhat unlikely.

The fact she and her business partner no longer speak to each other is also a bit sus.

And I firmly believe that any employer that isn’t holding employee entitlements in trust, is morally bankrupt even if they are not technically/legally bankrupt.

Nice to see the Administrator won’t go hungry.

IP

What’s the back-story here, anything interesting? Would I have heard of any of her business ventures?