Staff pay deal ends outage
A three day outage for cricket technology company CricHQ’s platforms only ended after technology staff struck a deal with receivers over unpaid wages for them and their colleagues.
On Friday night, hours before cricket clubs throughout the country were due to commence play, possibly on paper scoring sheets, CricHQ’s platforms were brought online.
New Zealand Cricket had taken steps to warn clubs to prepare to score games without the widelyused technology.
Employees that receivers KordaMentha wanted to continue to pay to get the technology running brokered a deal which would see their colleagues receive at least some of the money they are owed. Staff had not been paid since the start of September.
Based in Kelburn in Wellington, CricHQ claims to record one in every 10 balls bowled in competitive cricket around the world, and counts some of cricket’s greats among its shareholders.
At the time receivers were called in the company was said to have raised more than $20 million in investment, including up to US$10m from Singaporean venture capital firm Tembusu in 2015.
But despite lofty ambitions the company was placed into receivership on October 17, after failing to secure new investment.
In the days following KordaMentha’s appointment the company’s website went offline. Multiple sources have said that while KordaMentha attempted to get a core group of staff to continue to work to keep the website and apps operating, they refused to do so unless both they and their colleagues were given unpaid wages.
Initially the staff demanded full repayment of all backpay for all employees, but on Friday morning an agreement was reached which would see some payments made to all former employees, in return for
"You can work out that staff not being paid for six weeks prior to the receivership would indicate there was a severe shortage of cash." Receiver Brendon Gibson.
around six staff to return to work.
Within hours the platform was back online. The company previously had more than 20 Wellington-based staff.
KordaMentha partner Brendon Gibson confirmed the outline of the deal.
‘‘We as the receivers, with the support of the funders, have agreed to make some payments to some people to allow an opportunity to see if this business can be sold with the site operating.’’
Gibson said it was not unusual for receivers to be in a situation where employees were left out of pocket.
‘‘We haven’t got stock or debtors in this business, so we required funding for anything we were going to do, so we worked as quickly as possible with a range of stakeholders we had to manage to see if we could see if we could come to an arrangement with a range of people who were involved in this,’’ Gibson said.
Gibson confirmed employees had not been paid for some time. ‘‘You can work out that staff not being paid for six weeks prior to the receivership would indicate there was a severe shortage of cash.’’
Simon Baker, the founder and chief executive, resigned shortly before the company was placed into receivership. He is still a director.
Gibson declined to comment on whether KordaMentha was close to a deal to sell the company or its technology.