Supermac's refiles to show €3.8m pretax loss

THE COMPANY behind the Supermac’s fast food chain has re-filed its annual accounts for 2007 showing a pretax loss of €3.8 million compared with a pretax profit of almost €2.9 million in the accounts filed last October.

Supermac’s wrote off a further €6 million on its investment in the Claddagh Irish Pubs chain during the year.

This brought to more than €21 million the total written off on the investment over three years.

In the accounts filed with the Companies Registration Office at the end of last month, the €6 million write-off was taken as an exceptional item before the firm’s pretax profit, while it was taken after profit in the earlier accounts.

The accounts filed in October showed a retained loss of €3.5 million for the year, while the accounts submitted last month showed the €3.5 million as an after-tax loss for the company.

The Supermac’s owner, Galway businessman Pat McDonagh, said he was not sure whether the re-filing of the accounts was due to an error, but that the treatment of the write-off amounted to the “same difference” for the firm.

Both sets of accounts for 2007 show the company had retained losses of €5.4 million.

The company wrote off €11.1 million on the US Irish pub chain in 2005, €4.1 million in 2006 and €6 million in 2007, bringing the investment down to a nil value.

Financial troubles at the pub chain led to a legal row between its chief executive Kevin Blair and Mr McDonagh over $21 million (€15.97 million) which the latter gave to Claddagh. Mr McDonagh claimed it was a loan; Mr Blair claimed it was an investment.