INNER Workings, the Glasgow-based computer games company, managed to beat Bill Gates in court, but it could not make money and has collapsed, throwing 55 people out of work - some, apparently, with a month's pay still owing.
The company was one of the first in Scotland to float on the Alternative Investment Market when it was created in 1995. Now it has become the third Scottish AIM-listed company, after Scottish Pride and Creos International, to go bust.
Inner Workings issued a statement last night saying that it had failed to find anyone willing to inject more capital into the ailing company and, as a result, it would be wound up.
Chairman and managing director Lesley Keen broke the news to staff yesterday morning.
The announcement came as a bitter blow, since, according to one employee who refused to give his name, they had been asked to stay late on Wednesday night while a potential buyer from Norway came in to look at the operation.
Disappointment turned to anger in some cases when employees found that salaries, due to be have been paid into their bank accounts on Wednesday, had not been credited, he added.
Keen and other directors were not available for comment last night.
Inner Workings never managed to turn a profit, despite hopeful signs that its flagship computer game, Plane Crazy, would turn out to be a winner.
Although a breakthrough to profitability remained distant, the company received a moral boost in January when it won a battle with Microsoft in the Court of Session. It had been seeking to protect the identity of its screen character, Lemon Dog, from encroachment by Microsoft's look-alike computer mongrel, Rocky.
Its shares hit a high of 97.5p 12 months ago, valuing the company at #21m, but faith in the company's future dwindled as it gradually ran out of cash.
The most recent set of Inner Workings' published results, for the six months to September 30, showed losses more than doubling to #835,000.
By the time its shares were suspended on June 15 as a result of the company's financial difficulties, they had crashed to 18.5p, valuing the company at less than #4m.
The company said then it was negotiating with a third party for a cash injection to meet short-term working capital requirements.
These talks might even lead to Inner Workings being taken over at a price ''substantially below'' its current market value, it added.
The identity of the potential buyer was never disclosed, although more than one computer games company ran the rule over Inner Workings. Chris van der Kuyl's Vis Interactive publicly declared an interest in buying the business, but it was withdrawn 24 hours later.
Yesterday the board of Inner Workings finally admitted defeat.
It said in a statement: ''discussions with a third party regarding future development work and short-term working capital
payments have failed to conclude successfully and accordingly the directors have today instructed solicitors to petition the Court of Session for the winding up of the company''.
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