IMG Artists spirals deeper into loss

We’ve been reading the IMG Artists accounts for the year ended 31 December 2013 and it looks like the company is getting ever deeper into mire.

Turnover is down from £8.6 million to £7.2m and there’s a pre-tax operating loss of £341,914.

The company is carrying almost £3 million of debt due within a year and appears to be living off credit from its joint owners, the American fraudster Barrett Wissman (l. below) and the Russian Alexander Shustorovich.

In an extraordinary note to the accounts it is stated ‘The company has taken advantage of the exemption available in FRS 8 ‘Related party disclosures’ whereby it has not disclosed transactions with the parent company or any wholly owned subsidiary undetaking of the group.’

Smoke and mirrors, in other words. What you see is not what you get.

It gets worse. The main company, IMG Artists (UK) Limited, trading in several European countries, is owned by a parent company incorporated in Cyprus.

Under the heading ‘turnover’ we read: ‘In the opinion of the director the disclosure of the geographical analysis of turnover would be seriously prejudicial to the interests of the company’.

How interesting…. the more so when much of its business appears to be funneled through Italy.

Read these account whichever way you like, but they are far from transparent. Artists with IMG might wish to demand greater clarity.