A luxury lobster restaurant is at risk of closing because its owner must pay off an $11 million debt related to his other failed businesses.
A liquidation notice was reportedly issued to Lobster Cave in Beaumaris, south-east of Melbourne, last week.
The restaurant, which made headlines in 2017 when then Victorian opposition leader Matthew Guy was spotted dining with an alleged Melbourne mob boss in an incident tabloids dubbed “lobster with a mobster”, is run by chef Vasilios Fergadiotis, known as Bill Ferg.
Flexicommercial, a business lending company that offers a “buy now, pay later” model, filed liquidation proceedings against Mr Ferg’s lobster business last week, according to an ASIC notice.
A hearing is scheduled to take place on September 16 in the Supreme Court of New South Wales.
Several of Mr. Ferg’s wholesale food businesses have also gone bankrupt.
He is the sole director of Extramile Trading, which went into liquidation earlier this year with debts of $8.6 million, it said. news.com.au.
Extramile, which had five employees, operated as a wholesaler of dairy, meat and seafood products to the hospitality and food service industry in Braeside, south-east Melbourne.
A liquidation notice was reportedly issued to Lobster Cave in Beaumaris, south-east of Melbourne, last week.
The restaurant, which made headlines in 2017 when then Victorian Opposition Leader Matthew Guy was spotted dining with an alleged Melbourne mob boss in an incident tabloids dubbed “lobster with a mobster”, is run by chef Vasilios Fergadiotis, known as Bill Ferg (pictured).
There are 64 unsecured creditors who are owed $7.225 billion, according to a regulatory filing that the appointed liquidator, Stephen Dixon of insolvency firm Hamilton Murphy, filed with the corporate regulator last month.
It has since closed.
Another of Mr Ferg’s dairy and produce wholesalers, Green Earth Industries, went bankrupt with debts of $856,000.
Mr Ferg took over the company, which had already been in existence for two decades, in February this year. The company closed three months later.
Fonterra Brands, the company behind Bega cheese, Perfect Italiano cheese and Western Star butter, is its largest creditor, to which it owes $493,000.
Mr Ferg was also recently appointed sole director of Marsh Dairy Products, a company specialising in the distribution and packaging of dairy products.
The company is currently in administration with debts of around $2.5 million, but continues to operate.
The administrator said he had been able to pay $273,000 to creditors and had negotiated the sale of the company.
“We are limited in what we can say at this time due to litigation and negotiation issues as we deal with the challenges,” Ferg told news.com.au.