SurfRay, Dec 4 Update
December 4, 2008
A quick look at the Danish Company Registrar listing here has several SurfRay related listings. Using Google Translate, I thought one of the Mondosoft listings reported the firm as insolvent. Another uses the phrase ‘judicial winding’, which may suggest a legal process. If you have any information related to these listings, use the comments section of this Web log to keep me up to date. A happy quack to the reader who tipped me to this information.
Stephen Arnold, December 4, 2008
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5 Responses to “SurfRay, Dec 4 Update”
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Steve, I speak Danish. According to the Danish site, there is nothing wrong with Surfray.
Cheers,
What concerns me about this whole thing is this….Surfray employees have families that they need to care for.
My advice to those employees that have posted here so passionately is to ask to see your companies financials. You have a right to do so.
Best of luck to all.
Hi Stephen
I’m a long time follower of the Ontolica Search offerings from Mondosoft – Navigo Systems and Surfray and I have another advantage related to the recent writings and rumors about the financials of Surfray – I have a Danish friend named Mogens who is actually a examined auditor in Denmark.
I asked Mogens to help me understand as much as possible about the financials of Surfray.
We all need to understand as much as possible so that we can make our own judgements.
With the help from Mogens I can now give you a more in depth explanation and my opinion about the financials of Surfray following the investigation.
My conclusions (and the conclusion that Mogens made) is quite clear : The financial situation of Surfray is extremely poor and only a miracle can save the company from going bankrupt!!
All the information is derived from the official Danish websites available for these kinds of investigations.
First of all: your link up there from the Danish Registrar of companies shows that Surfray has been through a bankruptcy before and that the assets from the first bankruptcy estate apparently were transferred from the old Surfray to the new Surfray in 2004 or 2005. The first company was founded in 2000 and was dissolved following a bankruptcy (Konkurs in Danish is Bankruptcy in English). The original company# (CVRnr) was 25670027. The existing company# is 27988695. The latest company is still in business.
Mogens was able to dig a bit deeper into the matters around the existing Surfray company. Apparently the company changed auditors twice – from the well known Deloitte to the other well known auditor KPMG to the existing and rather unknown auditor being used today. Mogens called this a bad sign for the quality of the company – these changes has been done in the period from 2004 to 2007!!!
Digging even deeper into the matters shows that the existing Surfray company by December, 31st 2007 reported a financal loss of more than 15 mill Danish kroner – just below 3 mill USD and a total negative equity of 17 mill Danish Kroner – just above 3 mill USD.
The total debt in the company owed to Short Term Creditors (payable within a year) was around 38 mill Danish kroner – just below 7 mill USD while the Accounts receivables and other receivables were just 9.9 mill Danish kroner – around 1.8 mill USD. An extremely vulnerable situation to any company.
The auditor in the annual report explained that the company was vulnerable to close business if the management were not able to stop the losses and if the investors in the company were not willing to invest more money.
So we continued digging.
The Surfray company is owned by a company called MGV holding ApS. This company is owned by Martin Veise – The chairman, former CEO and founder of Surfray. MGV holding apparently owns two other companies – one called Sambo ApS and another one called Castrum ApS. These companies owns some real estate. The Castrum company owns another company named Medbo ApS.
Further digging revealed that the Medbo ApS company went bankrupt November, 5th 2008. Following the bankruptcy of Medbo the equity in the Castrum company is negative with more than 23 mill Danish kroner – more than 4 mill USD. Secondly some of the real estate owned by Castrum went on foreclosure in November 2008.
There is no news about the Sambo Company and there is no news about the MGV holding company.
Some more digging revealed that Martin Veise personally owned at the least 2 houses or properties – both went into foreclosure – one in September and one in November. It has not been possible to see if he owns more real estate.
The conclusion is quite clear – it is very unlikely that Martin Veise can find more money to fill the rather large financial holes in Surfray. Mogens made this comment: “It’s a collapsing house made of playing cards!!”
All in all – the conclusion is simply this – Surfray will run out of cash sooner or later. With the given financial crisis it is highly unlikely that anybody will bail Martin Veise or his companies out of the financial crisis unfolding in and around Surfray.
Stephen – I will be happy to send you the information as it is readily available in a set of PDF files. Mostly in Danish but the numbers are there.
Best Regards Bill
Now Surfray AB is in bankruptcy; https://poit.bolagsverket.se/KPNPublikWeb/PublikPoitIn.do
How long can Surfray A/S survive?
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