A meeting in Northampton on Wednesday 1st February organised by the Official Receiver was attended by creditors of Phil Martin, the property entrepreneur who declared bankruptcy in December 2010.

During the above meeting an independent trustee, Mr Heath Sinclair who is an insolvency practitioner from Mazars was as appointed as a Trustee by the Official Receiver after a unanimous vote of the attending creditors. At a separate meeting which also included creditors of Mr Martin’s trading entity Rapid Property Buyers Ltd, a unanimous decision was taken, together with approved proxy votes of the individual creditors who were not able to attend the meetings, to provide appropriate funds for further action to be taken by the Trustee towards recovering creditor losses. A creditors committee was formed and a decision was also taken to seek a winding up order of Rapid Property Buyers Ltd.

The investigation by the Official Receiver into Mr Martin’s affairs has only just begun and as this is a quite complex case it may take some time before any conclusions are announced by the Insolvency Service.

In a separate development, Let to Live Ltd a residential lettings agency based in Sheffield of which Mr Martin had been a company director, had its leased trading premises locked up by the property’s landlord after the company’s employees resigned on masse on Friday 28th January, after some weeks of turmoil following Mr Martin’s declaration of bankruptcy.