Klinger And Dorrer Rock No More

Wolfgang Klinger has quit his consultancy with Vienna-based promoter Rock & More and blames local bankruptcy lawyer Dr. Susi Pariasek for bringing the company to its knees.

"You never know what that woman will do next when it comes to money," he told Pollstar, while Rock & More managing director Chris Dorrer confirmed the company has no shows booked and will likely be closed within a month.

Klinger and Dorrer will be working with New York-based Schuhmertl Markets, an IT solutions and advisory firm with an office in Vienna. The company sees marketing synergies with the live entertainment industry and is looking to set up a promoting business in central and eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

They say they’ll also be working with CTS Eventim, the German ticketing giant that owns half of the country’s Medusa Group of promoters, with the intention of staging concerts in Russia.

Their third project is to be production consultants for a new arena to be built somewhere in The Balkans in 2009, although neither Klinger nor Dorrer was willing to give more detail.

All that looks left of an 18-month-long saga that’s seen the demise of two Rock & Mores is the dissolution of the actual companies, although Klinger doubts Pariasek will find there’s enough money left to justify her fees.

"She keeps investigating and no doubt she keeps collecting her invoices to send to the court, and so she’ll end up with the money that should have gone to creditors a long time ago," Klinger explained.

The problems began in October 2006 when the original Rock & More (or Rock & More Veranstaltungs Gm) went bust with debts of about euro 1.8 million and with only euro 120,000 in the coffers.

Pariasek was appointed official receiver, having previously overseen the winding up of the Austrian Promoters’ Group, the project Klinger and virtually all of the country’s other promoters had been involved in until it tanked for euro 2.5 million in June 2002.

The second company’s situation became more serious a couple of months later when the city’s bankruptcy court stopped the old Rock & More’s hearing and called in the state attorney to investigate its connections with the new company.

It emerged in a series of business moves that were later to come under Pariasek’s scrutiny that major company shareholder Heimo Hanserl appeared to have been making plans around the collapse of Rock & More Veranstaltungs (R&M Mark One) to set up a replacement called Rock & More Beteilegunts.

Austrian company records show that Rock & More Veranstaltungs Gm had changed name to MT Veranstaltungs GmbH months before it went bust and Hanserl had stepped down as managing director and sold what was left of the company.

Pariasek began looking at the connections between the two Rock & Mores, saying she believed the second company had simply taken over the contracts of the first company – but left its debts – and then sold it off as a near-bankrupt shell.

"The same people are still involved in running the new company and they’ve also re-employed many of the old company’s staff," she told Pollstar at the time, explaining that she felt the new company was responsible for some of the old company’s liabilities.

She said she believes the old company was renamed and then ditched to avoid the name Rock & More appearing in the bankruptcy list, thereby allowing the new company to continue trading under a very similar banner.

In October of last year Pariasek moved in closer to the second Rock & More by filing suit against it in Vienna’s High Court, having already raided the company’s offices and seized five laptops. She told Pollstar she had reason to believe there should have been more money left in the company than the euro 120,000 the books were showing.

Last May, as Pariasek began preparing the suit she was to file in the High Court, Hanserl sold Rock and More 2 to Lavinia,what Dorrer describes as a Dutch investment company, and he’s since reportedly moved to Germany and gone back to the laser optics business.

Pariasek, who is a partner in Pariasek Holper Rechtsanwälte, was not available to comment on the case at press time.