"Taylor and Sons Ltd
The Mistake: Omission of letter “s”
The Impact: Company was dissolved in 2014 and had a loss of $40 million
“S”
A symbol of hope in Superman’s world turned out to be a weapon of destruction for Taylor and Sons Ltd—a Welsh engineering firm established in 1875.
In 2009, Mr. Philip-Davison Sebry, MD and co-owner of Taylor and Sons, was enjoying his vacation in Maldives when it came to an unhappy ending with a phone call. The caller from Corus (now Tata Steel) asked why has his company gone into liquidation and was furious.
Of course, he was shocked.
He returned immediately to find that the Companies House, the organization in UK which publishes official notices about companies, had issued a notice about this company’s liquidation.
On further enquiry, he found that the Company House had mistakenly written ‘Taylor and Sons Ltd.’ instead of the Manchester-based ‘Taylor and Son’ which had actually gone into liquidation.
The result?
Although the error was rectified within 3 days with the Companies House compensating them with $17.2 m legal bill, the damage was done.
The false credit information was also sold by then. The company lost its credibility among its suppliers. They lost Tata Steel, their best customer, which was worth £400,000 a month. Employees also started demanding their salaries and were leaving the company in huge numbers.
5 years later, the company was finally dissolved. Mr. Sebry is now building a business from scratch. We all know how tough is that.
This is not a story of Taylor and Sons Ltd…but a story of missed ‘S’ and what it can do for your business."
