Bank pulls the plug on core development wing of Cork group

DUTCH-owned ACC bank pulled the finger out of a dyke which held back a tide of debt washing around west Cork-based developers Fleming Construction.

A Supreme Court ruling yesterday effectively pulled the rescue rug out from under John Fleming’s core development activity – but not directly affected, according to a spokesperson, are related Fleming firms such as modular building firms Fusion and Vision, and the Fota Island hotel and golf complex.

The troubled group’s debts have been publicly put at over €1 billion, following a massive Irish and overseas expansion before the property market’s house of cards collapse.

The rurally rooted company started out in 1975 building haysheds, moved through civil engineering projects and piers, developed business parks and factories, along with house and hotel building, followed up with wind energy and biofuels. However, it is brought down in large part by an unfinished 14-storey Sandyford, Co Dublin, apartment scheme called The Sentinel.

ACC Bank, which triggered Fleming’s loss of court protection was owed “just” €22 million, and started lending to Flemings about two years ago. Flemings’ three other banks (AIB, Bank of Scotland, and Anglo Irish Bank), and hundreds of other creditors, all had supported the High Court approved rescue plan agreed in November 2009.

The 35-year-old widely diversified construction group employed up to 500 people, and up to 300 in Co Cork. By this week, the numbers in Flemings construction wing were put at just 137.

Notable in Flemings’ recent travails through the courts was the support shown even by those owed millions, hundreds of thousands, and just thousands of euro. More than 100 of his creditors travelled to the High Court last autumn to show support for his rescue plan, in which they stood to get at most 22 cent in the euro.

Ireland doesn’t ‘do’ sympathy for developers, but John Fleming and team bucked that emotive trend, especially in its native west Cork, where tributes came yesterday to his decency, work ethic, local loyalty and tenacity.