By Ron Coates, 3 November 2000 18:18
NEWS A spokesman for receivers Arthur Andersen said: "We had a number of offers before yesterday's deadline. Now we want to pull it down to a shortlist and get around a table. We hope to finish the sale as soon as is possible." Most of the 80 staff, who were not paid for September, have been made redundant. A core dozen were retained to run a skeleton service for Powernet's data and network services customers. The Andersen spokesman could not give current customer numbers. Powernet, an early regional ISP, was set up six years ago with a reported £150m of equipment and funding from Cisco, Sun and Marconi. It is understood that the Financial Services Authority is to investigate the role of Powernet's brokers in a £5m private placing last December. Powernet's chief executive, Ian Carey, had been disqualified as a director in 1998, but received permission from the High Court to continue to act as a director of Powernet under certain stringent conditions. This was not mentioned in the prospectus. Carey is said to have previously been an executive with Saatchi & Saatchi.
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