Pinnacle developer owes investors £2.2m on Victoria House

Pinnacle Residential Liverpool, the company behind the development of Victoria House, owed investors nearly £2.2m when it collapsed earlier this year, an administrators’ report has revealed.

The company, which is the latest in a series of companies in the Pinnacle Alliance group to enter administration, was set up to convert the existing former office on James Street into 70 apartments.

Pinnacle pre-sold 34 of the apartments to investors, primarily based overseas, with prices ranging from £66,250 to £161,400, generating revenue of more than £2.4m.

These funds were held in a buyers’ company, and around £2.1m of this was released to Pinnacle.

Brochures marketing the project overseas suggested the scheme would complete by the end of 2017, but very little work has taken place, and while Goodwin Construction was attached as main contractor, the company is no longer involved.

According to administrators Dow Schofield Watts, the developer said it “did not achieve the anticipated level of sales within the required timeframe” to complete building works, leading a number of investors to request their deposits back from Pinnacle.

However, Pinnacle said it did not have enough funds available to repay these deposits.

According to a statement of affairs by the company’s director Carl Mills, the company owed investors nearly £2.2m at the time of its administration, while £576,000 is owed to unsecured trade creditors.

Mills also claimed the company had assets of £3.5m, but the administrators said it was expected that unsecured creditors would not receive any funds.

Victoria House has since been put up for sale by the administrator which said it had received interest from more than 120 parties, with a deadline for offers on the building set for six to eight weeks’ time. The administrators said this sale is likely to allow buyers to recoup their money.

Pinnacle Residential Liverpool is the latest Pinnacle to enter administration owing multi-million-pound figures to investors.

Director Carl Mills is listed as Pinnacle Residential Liverpool’s sole active director at Companies House. Mills is also a director at Pinnacle Angelgate and Pinnacle Student Developments Liverpool, which have both also entered administration in the past six months. Convicted conman Tony Freeman has been linked to the Angelgate development.

Pinnacle Student Development Liverpool, which entered administration earlier this year, owed investors £12m on the 252-bed The Quadrant development at the time of its collapse, while Pinnacle Angelgate, behind a long-stalled two-tower development on Manchester’s Dantzic Street, owed £23.7m to investors when it collapsed in September last year.