It looks like all the Australian Dore offices have closed and staff have been told that they are redundant. PodBlack Blog has information and advice for any staff or parents caught up in this.
According to the documents from the Administrator (courtesy of PodBlack), they were appointed on Thursday 15th. Other reports say that parents were contacted on Friday if they had an appointment due in the next two weeks. It also seems likely that staff were told on Friday that they had no jobs.
For an administrator to close down the firm this quickly suggests that the company is in a very poor state of affairs. If it was hiccup in the cash flow that forced Dore to call in the administrators then the Administrator would not of been so quick to close everything. Instead they would of sought to keep as much of the company operating as possible as this would give the creditors the biggest chance of recovering their money.
The fact everything has closed all most certainly means that they will never reopen. I think parents in particular will find it very difficult to get any of their money back as the firm will have very few assets. The buildings will be reclaimed by the bank or the landlord. Any office equipment and furniture will be auctioned off but it is unlikely to raise much money, probably barely enough to pay the Administrator’s costs. Intangible assets such as the Dore brand name will not be worth anything either.
The one thing that may be worth money, and I suggests that anyone going to the creditor’s meeting raises this question, is who owns the intellectual property to the treatment? If Dore Australia has a formal license with Dore UK to sell Dore UK’s treatment then Dore Australia has no intellectual property assets to sell. On the other hand if there is no formal agreement, then the secrets of the Dore treatment may be up for grabs. If this is the case, the internal staff training books, the exercise plans given to parents and everything relating to it are all assets of Dore Australia and must be sold by the Administrator. That is one auction I would like to attend.
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The holding company of Dore in the UK (Camden Holdings which owns DDAT(UK)) receives income in the form of royalties from overseas operations.
This is stated in the statutory accounts and would lead me to believe that there probably is a formal agreement in place, and the IP is owned by Camden Holdings. However, it could be that there are different arrangement for different countries and perhaps the overseas royalties do not include any payments from Austrailia. So back to square one.