It’s at Least This Much
It’s no secret that Norton Motorcycles is in some deep trouble. The company entered administration (basically bankruptcy) due to the fact that it couldn’t pay some of its debts. Then there’s a whole pensions scam that happened and is currently being investigated. The company appears to be completely mismanaged and involved in some horribly fraudulent activities. Norton Motorcycles owed tons of money, and the publication SuperBike did a deep dive into what was actually owed.
Before I get into the numbers revealed by SuperBike, I want to discuss the fact that there are three different types of creditors in this situation. There’s secured creditors, preferential creditors, and unsecured creditors. The secured creditors are banks and financial institutions, the preferential creditors are folks in the company, and the unsecured creditors are customers who bought bikes and other investors who didn’t fit into the aforementioned categories.
Across the board, Norton Motorcycles owned a total of £28,352,089, which is over $35 million. According to SuperBike, the way that breaks down is like this: £7.11 million to secured creditors, £46,400 to preferential creditors, and £7.1 million to unsecured creditors. The rest is made up of the pensions scheme that the company ran and some shareholders of the business.
In terms of folks getting paid, The secured creditors (banks) will get their money first, then the preferential creditors, then the unsecured creditors and then the pensions folks. It’s not expected that anyone outside of the secured creditor category will see any money. The people who fell victim to the pensions scheme could, but all that depends on the investigation into the matter.
In short, this is a huge and utter mess, and there is a lot of money wrapped up into the whole thing. It will take some time before things get sorted out, and even then it won’t be to hardly anyone’s liking.