Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

There has been no ob­jec­tion so far to a move to wind up the News­day news­pa­per af­ter 32 years of op­er­a­tion. 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Dai­ly News Ltd, the par­ent com­pa­ny of the news­pa­per, made the rev­e­la­tion as their pe­ti­tion to wind up the com­pa­ny came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Maris­sa Robert­son yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, at­tor­ney Gre­go­ry Pan­tin said the pe­ti­tion could not im­me­di­ate­ly pro­ceed to the stage of ap­point­ing char­tered fi­nan­cial an­a­lyst Maria Daniel as liq­uida­tor due to a de­lay in pub­lish­ing the no­tice of the pe­ti­tion in the T&T Gazette. 

Pan­tin point­ed out that sev­en days had to elapse af­ter pub­li­ca­tion for the case to move for­ward, and the no­tice was on­ly pub­lished last Fri­day de­spite ef­forts to have it pub­lished ear­li­er this month. 

The gazetted no­tice in­vit­ed any cred­i­tor or con­trib­u­to­ry of the com­pa­ny in­tend­ing to sup­port or op­pose the move to ap­pear at the hear­ing. 

Jus­tice Robert­son ad­journed the case to Fri­day morn­ing, when a fur­ther up­date would be pro­vid­ed. 

The pe­ti­tion was filed on De­cem­ber 31, last year, with the com­pa­ny cit­ing fi­nan­cial is­sues caused by steadi­ly de­clin­ing ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue and the im­pact of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. 

It was on­ly re­vealed by the com­pa­ny on Jan­u­ary 9, this year, as it pub­lished the last phys­i­cal edi­tion of the news­pa­per, which was es­tab­lished in Sep­tem­ber 1993. 

The news­pa­per has con­tin­ued to pub­lish dig­i­tal­ly while the wind­ing-up pro­ce­dure is still pend­ing. 

Un­der the pro­ce­dure, the com­pa­ny’s as­sets would be as­sessed and sold in or­der to clear its ex­ist­ing li­a­bil­i­ties to cred­i­tors. 

The com­pa­ny is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Miguel Vasquez of Hamel-Smith and Com­pa­ny.