Law Wraps Hessenthaler’s Business

Bankruptcy administrator and ad hoc concert promoter Steve Law has wrapped John Hessenthaler Concert Productions with debts of about £200,000 and next to no assets.

Trade creditors won’t get a bean, but thousands of ticket buyers won’t be out of pocket because Law – who turned concert promoter to keep some of the business alive – managed to transfer 18,500 people to other rescheduled shows.

That left about 5,000 fans of acts including Jools Holland, Daniel Beddingfield, Will Young, and Status Quo with no redress, unless they’d bought after JHCP had called in Ensors or had credit card insurance.

Law’s office at Ensors, the Ipswich-based accountants that handled Hessenthaler’s administration, said he won’t comment on his short spell as a promoter. But at the time, he told the local East Anglian Daily Times that he’d like to save the July 29, 2005, McFly show in the town’s Christchurch Park “because it would be good for Ipswich and for Suffolk.”

— John Gammon