Finding Phil Brewer

Phil Groom writes:

A number of suppliers and other creditors have been in touch to say that Phil Brewer is not responding to emails or other business correspondence. That’s his prerogative, of course, and hardly surprising given his shameful record of business practice here in the UK. I remain completely astonished that despite knowing the facts about his abusive treatment of his employees and the utter contempt he has shown towards his business partners, the powers-that-be at Durham Cathedral continue to provide him with a foothold and safe haven from which to operate: he should be summarily evicted.

Be that as it may, however, here’s a summary of the contact information that I have for him. All of this is drawn from publicly available sources, largely from a simple Google search for Philip W Brewer. A search for his brother, J Mark Brewer, is similarly rewarding, but for today, let’s focus on finding Phil:

• Address: Philip W Brewer, 2610 W Bountiful Lane, Tucson, AZ 85742 (Source: Pima County Court Records: Dispute with neighbours - pdf or html). Should anyone wish to visit in person, accommodation can be provided.
• Facebook: Philip W Brewer – Tucson, AZ
• Linked In: Philip Brewer | pdf
• Website with phone number and email address: Brewer Enterprises (screenshot)

You’ll find more info, as well as a round up of creditors already paid, here:

• Pursuing the Brewers: Contact Info, Facts and Resources

So no more excuses: send the man a Christmas card today; and why not drop the powers-that-be at Durham Cathedral a line as well to tell them what you think of the ongoing situation there? A Christmas card for the beleaguered staff at the Cathedral bookshop might go down well too, come to think of it…

Northern Echo on Durham Cathedral Bookshop: Brothers are ordered to leave cathedral shop

Northern Echo - Brothers are ordered to leave cathedral shop

Phil Groom writes:

Thanks to Mark Tallentire of the Northern Echo for following up on his previous report on this story:

TWO brothers at the centre of an unholy row over the running of a cathedral bookshop have been told to leave within a year.

Critics said Phil and Mark Brewer ravaged the Durham Cathedral bookshop, once described as the best theological bookshop in the world, leaving it a shadow of its former self.

Hundreds signed a petition calling on the Cathedral Chapter to rescue the shop from the US pair, invoking the Biblical story of Jesus going into the temple to throw out the money-lenders to support their case.

Now, in a statement released to The Northern Echo, the chapter has announced it has served notice on the Brewers’ Saint Stephen the Great Trust, requiring it to vacate the premises by April 30, 2010…

• Read the full report

Kudos to Matt Wardman for drawing the story to Mark’s attention.

Durham Cathedral Bookshop: Cause to Celebrate, Cause for Concern

Phil Groom writes:

As most readers of this blog will be aware by now, on Friday, May 1st, 2009, the Chapter of Durham Cathedral issued the following statement:

Statement by the Chapter of Durham Cathedral

Durham Cathedral has today served notice under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 on the current operators and occupiers of Durham Cathedral Shop requiring them to vacate the premises on 30th April 2010. A new Cathedral Shop under the Cathedral’s management will open on 1st May 2010 opposite the Undercroft Restaurant where, with the restaurant, it will provide a focus for visitor facilities.

To enable the necessary work for the relocation of the shop, the exhibition in the Treasures will close at the end of 2009. A new exhibition will reopen in the Claustral buildings at a date to be announced.

1st May 2009
(Posted on Friday 1st May 2009)

The statement has been widely welcomed and hailed as a major step forward in the ongoing battle against the Brewer brothers and their depredations of the former SPCK bookshops.

Unfortunately I was offline when the news broke, hence the silence on this blog. I’d therefore like to place on record my personal thanks to David Keen and Matt Wardman for running with the story, as well as to those who twittered the news:

David Keen:

• Breaking News: Brewers to be evicted from Durham Cathedral bookshop
• Press statement in response to Durham Cathedral eviction of the Brewers

Matt Wardman: 

• J Mark and Phil Brewer evicted from Durham Cathedral Bookshop
• Response to Durham Cathedral expulsion of Shop Lessee from Durham Cathedral Shop

Twitter Search:

• Twitter Search: Tweets about Durham Cathedral Bookshop

The fact that the boot has at last been firmly applied to the Brewers’ backside is definitely cause for celebration, but — as per the response issued by Matt — many concerns remain.

In particular, a massive question mark now hangs over the current Durham Cathedral shop staff. Whilst it appears that the Chapter may have no legal obligation to offer the shop staff continued employment, one would hope that they, as a Christian organisation, recognise a duty of care and pastoral responsibility for all who work in the Cathedral precincts, irrespective of whether or not they are employed directly by the Chapter.

Whatever happens, we can be sure that the new Chapter Clerk, Mr Philip Davis, won’t miss a trick: as the Dean himself has said,

A good Chapter Clerk is the key to the Cathedral’s efficiency, professionalism and financial stability.  It is conceivable that something might happen in the Cathedral without the Chapter Clerk’s knowledge, but I rather doubt it.

I take this opportunity to wish Mr Davis well in his new role and to encourage him to ensure that proper pastoral care for the Cathedral Shop staff is placed high up on the Cathedral’s list of priorities during the next twelve months — and beyond.

Finally, I would also like to thank all those who signed the Durham petition calling for this action. The petition will now be formally closed and over the next few days all signatories will be notified of this development.

Response to Durham Cathedral expulsion of Shop Lessee from Durham Cathedral Shop

Cross post from the Wardman Wire

Background (source)

In October 2006 the former SPCK Bookshops and their associated websites were entrusted by SPCK to the Saint Stephen the Great Charitable Trust (SSG), under the control of Messrs Philip and Mark Brewer. Unfortunately shops and staff alike suffered in the transition to new ownership, leading to staff departures, branch closures and uncertainty over opening times for those that remain.

In November 2007 SPCK withdrew SSG’s licence to trade under the SPCK name but throughout 2008 the name was still in use over most of the remaining shops and as of Spring 2009 was still being used in Durham Cathedral Bookshop.

Reports emerging during June 2008 indicated a deepening crisis: SSG filed for bankruptcy in the USA whilst ownership and control of the shops was transferred to a new company — also registered to the Brewers — called ‘ENC Management Company’. The Durham and Chichester shops appear to have been reconstituted as independent trading companies but remain under the Brewers’ personal control.

In July 2008, Mark Brewer attempted to silence reporting on this affair by issuing ‘Cease and Desist’ warnings and threats of legal action against several reporters including Dave Walker, Phil Groom and Clem Jackson of Christian Marketplace magazine. This backfired spectacularly, leading to an explosion of reporting and reposting of Dave Walker’s material across the blogosphere.

On 28th August 2008, however, the bankruptcy filing was dismissed with prejudice by the Texas Bankruptcy Courts and was described by the judge as having been submitted in bad faith: that is, as ‘done for a wrong or improper purpose.’ (The Bookseller, 5 September 2008, Issue No. 5348, p.6). Shortly after this — on 24th September 2008 — the Brewers sold the Exeter shop for £507,000 in violation of a covenant; it is now trading as a jewellery and gift store.

Many of the shop workers who were forced out of their jobs by the Brewers are being supported through Employment Tribunals by Usdaw: these actions are ongoing.

Response to the Specific Situation at Durham Cathedral Bookshop

We welcome the statement today from the Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral that notice has been served on the current operators and occupiers of Durham Cathedral Shop requiring them to vacate the premises on 30th April 2010. Bearing in mind that a petiton of almost 400 signatures was submitted to the Dean and Chapter in Autumn 2008, we would have preferred action to have been taken far sooner.

The Durham Cathedral Bookshop has been the flagship shop in the chain, supplying much of the turnover and most of the profit, which has enabled the whole chain to stay afloat for the last three years.

Therefore this action – subject to any legal challenges or actions issued by J Mark and Phil Brewer through their management company – will, we hope, be the beginning of the end of the saga of serious mismanagement of the SPCK Bookshop chain from October 2006 to the present.

We are concerned that the time window until April 2010 will give the Brewers an opportunity to manipulate the business further for their personal benefit.

The Durham Shop continues to use the SPCK logo and materials, permission for which were withdrawn a long time ago, to trade with incorrect Employers’ Liability Insurance, and to ignore obligations in the shop lease to stock a wide range of books. It has been a stain on the reputation of Durham Cathedral.

The records of the attempted Bankruptcy revealed that large sums of money had “gone missing”. We have documented how sums in excess of $700,000 had been removed from the finances of the Durham Cathedral Bookshop under questionable circumstances to other businesses and charities controlled by the Brewers. Other monies from the Bookshop Chain had been spent in unusual ways for a charity, including the maintenance of an aeroplane owned by Phil Brewer, who was responsible for management of the Durham Cathedral Shop.

The mismanagement of the Durham Cathedral Bookshop, and the whole former-SPCK chain, requires proper investigation and resolution.

Matt Wardman, mattwardman AT gmail DOT com
Phil Groom, groom DOT phil AT gmail DOT com

Notes

For more information about the history of the SPCK saga, check these links:

1. Durham Cathedral Shop Finances and questionable Saint Stephen the Great payments
2. Durham Cathedral Shop Adverts and Anagrams: Third Space Books = Crooks Ship A Debt
3. The SPCK/SSG Newsblog: http://spckssg.wordpress.com/
4. My original article back in December 2007, including an interview with Mark Brewer and others.
5. An introduction to the Dave Walker case (legal threats).
6. A recent visit to Durham Cathedral Bookshop.
7. Pursuing the Brewers: Contacts and Facts.
8. Questions for J Mark Brewer: SPCK Bookshops Asset Stripping. Ministry of Truth cross-post.

Tags: Durham Cathedral, Durham Cathedral Bookshop, Michael Sadgrove, Phil Brewer, Saint Stephen the Great, SPCK, SSG

No Signs of Change in Durham Cathedral

Phil Groom writes:

Durham. I visited last Tuesday, April 21st: a beautiful spring day, a walk down by the river, lunch in the Cathedral Café. Magnificent. If you’ve never been to Durham, you really should take some time out to pay a visit. Click the thumbnails for bigger pictures.

I wandered on to the bookshop: the bookshop about which the Dean of Durham, the Most Very Revd Michael Sadgrove, has himself personally emphasised: 

this “business within the Cathedral” is NOT managed, is NOT controlled and is NOT run by the Cathedral itself.

So who is running it? The sign at the entrance seems perfectly clear: “The Cathedral Shop”. There was scaffolding up when I arrived: were they about to change the sign to something less misleading? Unfortunately not: it was something higher up.

I walked in to be met by another couple of signs: “Cathedral Shop gifts and books” and “Durham Cathedral: This SPCK book and gift shop was opened on Monday 22 December 1997 by — ” I forget who: some historic personage; and perhaps that’s the point: the sign is part of the shop’s history, and Durham Cathedral is big on history.

But it looked for all the world to me like a sign declaring the shop’s ownership. I wondered if, as had once been planned, Jarrolds had taken over the shop, would it have been left in situ, boldly proclaiming for the avoidance of doubt that this is an SPCK bookshop? Somehow, I doubt it.

I wandered further in. You’ll notice a lot of wandering — and wondering — in this post. A friendly young lady greeted me with a smile at the till. I smiled back and nodded. I met several members of staff: they were unfailingly friendly and polite, which, given their plight — working for a minimum wage, employed via an agency a third party organisation by two obnoxious rogues (yes, Messrs Brewer: that’s you I’m referring to) who treat their staff with complete contempt and their customers like cattle to be milked in some sort of cowboy’s power games — was quite astonishing.

I knew that stock was likely to be fairly thin on the ground in the shop, having seen asingleblog’s photos. I’m not sure that I was really prepared for how thin the stock was. The staff had done an admirable job of spreading it out, most books face out on the shelves and most shelves facing customers entering the shop almost convincingly full. But like the signs at the main entrance and the SPCK labels on the goods and by the till, this was a facade: once inside the Great Kitchen and looking back towards the entrance, the huge gaps were glaringly obvious.

Durham Cathedral Shop: Local Interest Section

Excerpt from the SPCK-Durham Cathedral Lease (see below)

The situation beggars belief. The terms of the original lease with SPCK, excerpted below, were very specific: a wide range of stock to be maintained in all areas. These terms have been comprehensively breached. Yet the Dean and Chapter allow the Brewers to continue trading; worse yet, they allow them to continue trading under the guise of an SPCK bookshop, bringing both SPCK and the Cathedral into disrepute.

Visitors have absolutely no way of knowing that the shop is no longer operated by SPCK: on the contrary, they are misled by out of date signage and SPCK labels still in use around the shop.

Given that in November last year the Dean was adamant in his denial of any responsibility for the shop, why does he allow this? 

I need to state once again that the Cathedral Chaper [sic] does not manage the shop in its Great Kichen [sic]. This is run as a franchise subject to strict business law, as it was in the days of SPCK. Not all petitioners appear to be clear that a franchise is a formal, legal arrangement to which the parties to it are bound.

Strict business law that one side, it seems, is allowed to ignore with impunity; a formal, legal arrangement to which only one party appears to consider itself bound and which the other treats with utter contempt.

I finished my visit by calling in at the Chapter Office in the hope of introducing myself to the Dean and asking him a few questions. Unfortunately he wasn’t there. I left my card with the receptionist and wandered away, saddened, bemused and more than a little angry. There is a grim darkness — a Texan darkness — at the heart of Durham Cathedral, and the sooner it is excised, the better.

An Excerpt from the SPCK-Durham Cathedral Lease

SPCK hereby promise to stock…

(a) A wide range of books of interest to visitors to Durham and the Cathedral

(b) A wide range of cards, stationery, souvenirs and gift items likely to be purchased by visitors to Durham and the Cathedral. … so that both parties are satisfied that standards appropriate to the shop are maintained…

(c) A wide and diverse range of religious books, including children’s books.

(d) Adequate stockholding for parochial needs in the diocese.

(e) A wide range of theological texts appropriate to the needs of students and more specifically those theological texts required by the syllabus of Durham University and the Theological Colleges.

 

Comparing Notes: What a Bookshop Shouldn’t Look Like, and What It Should

Phil Groom writes:

Thanks to asingleblog for permission to repost these pictures from the Durham Cathedral Shop:

This, then, is how the shelves were looking during Holy Week this year in what was once described as one of the UK’s finest theological bookshops; and these “are just a few photos,” says asingleblog. ”Some shelves are entirely empty.” 

As asingleblog asks, How bad does it have to get? Instructing staff to lie to suppliers about the company’s liability for its debts, trading without a valid Certificate of Employers’ Liability Insurance and failing to keep the shelves adequately stocked — not to mention the question of how much of this remaining stock is in real terms stolen property, belonging to unpaid suppliers! This is now Durham Cathedral’s heritage, this is what Durham Cathedral now offers to its visitors courtesy of J Mark and Philip W Brewer.

At the time of writing our petition calling upon the Dean and Chapter “to take decisive action now to rescue the shop from further decimation” runs to 364 signatures. Alan Parker, the 357th person to sign it, asks:

Is the North East going to be the forgotten region for access to vital Christian literature? This is in fact the cradle of Christianity in England!

For comparison, I offer you these pictures which I took at the beginning of Lent, during a visit to Sarum Books, Salisbury, a fine example of how a Christian bookshop ought to be stocked, making the most of every inch of shelf space:

Anger in Durham as Dean Snubs Petitioners’ Concerns

Phil Groom writes:

Petitioners calling for the Brewers’ business relationship with Durham Cathedral to be terminated have responded angrily to an announcement in last Sunday’s Cathedral Newsletter that the Dean’s new book — somewhat ironically, published by SPCK — is to be officially launched from the Cathedral Shop.

One petitioner has bluntly described the Dean’s decision to host his book launch in the Brewers’ shop as verging on “a deliberate two fingers against those who’ve signed the petition”, whilst another, leaving a message on the petition itself, states equally bluntly, “The fact that this petition still exists displays a singular disrespect for those who have signed it.”

I will trust in you, by the Very Revd Michael Sadgrove, Dean of Durham

The book, entitled I Will Trust In You: Companion to the Evening Psalms, ISBN 9780281059874, is priced at £9.99 but can be pre-ordered from Amazon for only £6.59, a 34% discount.

In November 2008 the Dean responded to a concerned petitioner by issuing a strong statement distancing the Cathedral authorities from the shop, noting that “the Cathedral Chaper does not manage the shop in its Great Kichen.” [sic] and emphasising that the shop “is NOT managed, is NOT controlled and is NOT run by the Cathedral itself.”

The book’s title, however, seems to beg the question: can the Dean be trusted to maintain that distance? If you share the concerns raised here and by the petitioners, please consider writing to the Dean personally to ask him that question and encourage him to seek an alternative venue: contact details may be found on the Cathedral Who’s Who page.

The date of the proposed launch is uncertain, given in the newsletter as March 31st whilst shop staff have reportedly been told that the event is scheduled for April 7th, during Holy Week. As this report goes live there is no mention of the book launch on the Cathedral website News, Notices or Services & Events pages.

The petition, calling upon the Dean to take urgent and decisive action to free the Cathedral Shop from the Brewers’ control, was launched in August 2008. It now carries more than 360 signatures and remains open until its objective has been reached. If you have not already signed it, please consider doing so and please spread the word.

Naughty Thoughts about Durham Cathedral Bookshop

Matt Wardman muses:

Where is Very Rev Brandon Jackson when you need him? He’d sort out Mr Philip Brewer Esq in short order, probably borrowing the Bishop’s sword for the occasion:

The sword is presented to each new Bishop of Durham on entering the diocese of Durham for the first time at Croft Bridge.

It gets better. The tradition is this:

It is a great ceremonial tradition in which the a local dignitary declares: My lord bishop I hereby present you with the falchion wherewith the champion Conyers slew the worm, dragon or fiery flying serpent which destroyed man, woman and child in memory of which the king then reigning gave him the manor of Sockburn to hold by this tenure that upon the entrance of every bishop into the county the falchion sould be presented.

It is the one time since 1642 when we need a Civil War in a Cathedral, and he appears to have gone back to being a Vicar somewhere, or retired.

I say translate The Very Revd Brandon Jackson to the Benefice of Sockburn.

I write with happy memories of a baptismal service in Bradford Cathedral in about 1985 where the Very Rev Jackson delivered a lecture about how the “Holy” water was

“ordinary water, not special water, not different, not transformed, just H2O set aside for a special purpose”.

One other possibly relevant lesson that we should remember from Bradford Cathedral is that even if someone does sue a Cathedral, it is damned difficult to actually collect any money unless the Cathedral wants you to. That would give plenty of time for the legal authorities to catch up with our friends Mark and Phil.

Alternatively, we could wish that it was 1831 when the Bishops of Durham still had their own private army.

In the meantime we will have to remember that in the village of Romaldkirk not so far from Durham, there still exists a set of stocks on the village green. They even have four armholes, so we could do both Brewers at once.

Romaldkirk Stocks (Photo: BBC)

“Cowboy hat” shy with rotten tomatoes while drinking a pint in the local pub across the street, anyone?

Durham Cathedral Shop Adverts and Anagrams: Third Space Books = Crooks Ship A Debt

Matt Wardman writes:

Firstly, the shop in Durham Cathedral is operated on a Leasehold basis and is not directly managed by Durham Cathedral Dean and Chapter. The business malpractices documented in this article concern Mark and Philip Brewers’ running of the former SPCK chain of bookshops. These are not legally the responsibility of Durham Cathedral.

I hope that that disclaimer is clear in its meaning. So – to business.

‘Third Space Books of Durham Cathedral’

This is an advert for Third Space Books scanned in from the Middlesborough Diocesan Year Book 2009 of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Middlesborough:

Call me St Cuthbert and set me spinning in my grave, but I’d have thought that any adverts bigging up Durham Cathedral Great Kitchen as the base for the Brewer run bookshop should actually use the website and name of Durham Cathedral Shop. Certainly when I phoned up 0191 386 2972 this morning, that is how the phone was answered by a very friendly-sounding shop assistant.

Further, the terms of the Lease on the shop commit the lessee to “diligently publicise” the shop. Using a different name in adverts to that used to answer the phone does not seem to me to fit that bill.

And surely the real advantage of the name “Durham Cathedral Shop” is that it stays the same for a reasonable length of time. You almost have to put a display screen in where the lease used to say “SPCK” these days, because responsibility for the lease has gone through a series of business entities like a game of pinball as the Brewers try to dodge paying for the at least $1.5m worth of goods, services and employees’ money they have obtained or retained in violation of all their legal responsibilities.

The Durham Cathedral Bookshop Lease

This is what the Lease (I have a copy of the lease under which SPCK operated Durham Cathedral Bookshop) says (my italics):

Terms of an Agreement Between

The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK)

and

The Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral

Clause 11: Both SPCK and the Chapter will diligently publicise the SPCK shop. The Chapter will put out and maintain notices directing the public to the SPCK shop.

As explained above, “SPCK” should be replaced by whatever the name of the business entity operating the shop happens to be this month. So far, it has been (I think, but it’s tough keeping track from outside):

1. The Society of St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust.
2. St Stephen the Great (Company Limited by Guarantee), where it has sometimes been responsiblity for employees was transferred.
3. St Stephen the Great LLC – purported name of the non-existent entity in the US Bankruptcy Scam.
4. Durham Cathedral Shop Management Company (which has now held the lease for a remarkable 8 months).

Next month it will presumably be renamed to something like Shysters ‘R’ Us.

Does anyone know if you you can get leases with the name of the lessee written in erasable ink?

Transferrable Assets (or not)

This post assumes that the Brewers have managed to transfer the lease successfully among their various business organisations. If that is so, I cannot understand their problems in transferring any of the following (to pick a few examples out of the air):

1. Transferring the “Personal” alcohol licences of the “premises supervisor” at Durham Cathedral from the previous shop manager who was sacked on the spot told that she had resigned when she refused to sign a heavily slanted “franchise” agreement to take on the cathedral shop. (Note: this was a proposed sub-let from the Brewers, not involving the Dean and Chapter).
2. Transferring payments for booklets supplied by the cathedral in August 2007 in the sum of 418 ukp to the Dean and Chapter. There exists a debt of $664.10 to “Durham Cathedral Chapter Office” recorded (see below) on the papers submitted by J Mark Brewer in his admitted “bad faith” Bankruptcy Application to the South Texas Bankruptcy Court. That might suggest that someone needs to send the Brewers on a course in “transferring money to your suppliers for Goods Received” (*), along with the one that J Mark Brewer has hopefully attended by now on “Legal Ethics and Texas Bankrupcy Law” at the insistence of the Judge Marvin Isgur of the South Texas Bankruptcy Court.
3. Transferring monies deducted from their employees’ paychecks as “National Insurance” and “Pensions Contributions” to the relevant authorities.

Strangely, J Mark and Philip Brewer seem to be incredibly efficient (PhD Level at least) at transferring payments of hundreds of thousands from the former-SPCK chain of bookshops to other organisations they control.

Durham Cathedral Shop Finances and questionable Saint Stephen the Great payments

Matt Wardman writes:

First of all, let me set the context for this series of posts.

I have covered the rundown of the bookshop chain that used to be known as SPCK over several months. An earlier post covered a story of some leaked correspondence from the time when the management of the bookshop at Durham Cathedral was transferred from the Society of Saint Stephen the Great (SSGCT) to the newly created company “Durham Cathedral Shop Management Limited” (DCSML), which showed a brutal approach to the management of unpaid suppliers to the previous management company SSGCT.

This article is about a debt of almost £100,000 ($165,000+) built up over a mere three month period owed to the new company DCSHL by SSGCT after the new company took over on March 11th 2008, and before J Mark Brewer attempted to put SSGCT into Bankruptcy in Texas on 19 June 2008 (that is the date when the “Statement of Financial Affairs” was filed).

I also take a detailed look at a series of payments comprising well over half a million dollars taken out of the SSGCT organisation during a period of 12 months and paid to J Mark Brewer’s legal firm or to him personally, or to the “Orthodox Christian Mission Fund” of which he is listed as the Trustee.

I need to attach a strong note here that the SPCK mission society who used to be associated with the bookshop chain which includes the Durham Cathedral Bookshop is no longer involved in any way, and that Durham Cathedral are the landlord and not responsible for the management of the Durham Cathedral Bookshop. Nothing in this article reflects on either Durham Cathedral or SPCK.

I should also say that there are a lot of numbers in this post, and I will be pleased to correct any mistakes.

The Financial Context: Turnover of SPCK Bookshops

The turnover of the SPCK Bookshops Chain in previous years has been as follows, using figures drawn from SPCK Annual Accounts

• May 2003 to April 2004: 6.597 million UKP
• May 2003 to April 2004: 6.206 million UKP
• May 2004 to April 2005: 6.003 million UKP
• May 2005 to April 2006: 6.037 million UKP
• May 2006 to October 2006: 2.570 million UKP (6 months)

On 31 October 2006, the operation of the SPCK Bookshop Chain was transferred to the Society of Saint Stephen the Great Charitable Trust (SSGCT – Charity No. 1109008).

At this point the financial trail vanishes into a Black Hole, because SSGCT (Charity No. 1109008) filed one set of accounts covering 4 NOVEMBER 2004 TO 31 MARCH 2006, and nothing after then. On 8 August 2007, SSGCT was united by direction of the Charity Commission with the new charity SAINT STEPHEN THE GREAT (Charity No. 1119839) as a subsidiary. As at December 1st 2008 no accounts for the new charity have appeared on the Charity Commission website. Let me be very clear and say that none are required to have been presented yet.

However, that does leave us without trading accounts for the from October 2006 to August 2007 for a bookshop chain with a turnover likely to be in excess of 5 million UKP. That is not a satisfactory state of affairs.

But … as with a lot of other information in this case … we have figures in dollars in the “Bankruptcy Documents”. So, courtesy of J Mark Brewer and his “Statement of Financial Affairs“, dated June 19 2008, we have:

• Nov 2006 to March 2007: $4.733 million = 2.37 million UKP (using exchange rate of 2:1)
• April 2007 to March 2008: $7.555 million = 3.78 million UKP
• April 2008 to Jun 4 2008: $0.299 million = 0.15 million UKP

The savage drop in monthly turnover is mainly due to all of the shops being being transferred to different companies.

The Transfers out of Durham Cathedral Bookshop

The SSG Bankruptcy Schedule of Debtors Continuation 2 document shows an outstanding debt of $165,388 (82,700 ukp at 1:2 exchange rate) owed to Durham Cathedral Shop Management Ltd.

Remember, the company to which this debt was owed only came into existence 11 weeks before the debtor filed for Bankruptcy.

Durham Shop Turnover for Interim Period

Let’s compare the size of that transfer with the turnover of the Durham shop in that period.

Within these turnover figures, the turnover of the Durham shop is the largest in the chain, and accounts for around 15% of the turnover of whole chain (*), which gives us an estimated figure of £565k for the turnover for April 2007-March 2008.

The period between March 11 2008 (when the new Durham Company was set up) and May 31st is 11 weeks, and the turnover of the Durham shop would be roughly 11/52 of £565k, which is £120k. That figure assumes a flat turnover profile throughout the year.

(*) I am told by a reliable source.

SSGCT Debt is 70% of Entire Durham Cathedral Shop Turnover for interim period

So – how the hell did the Saint Stephen the Great Charitable Trust manage to build up a debt to the new company running the Durham Cathedral Shop of fully 70% of that shop’s entire estimated turnover between 11 March 2008 when that company was created, and June 4th 2008 when J Mark Brewer attempted to put the Charitable Trust itself into Bankruptcy in Texas? Or, to take a view from the other side, resources or assets equivalent to 70% of the shop’s estimated turnover during the period were transferred out to SSGCT at a time when past suppliers were simply . not . being . paid.