EFFORTS TO salvage part of the business empire of John Sweeney, the Galway entrepreneur who bought a stake in the Shelbourne Hotel, will move back to the High Court next week after a rescue bid aimed at taking four companies out of examinership was opposed by the businessman’s largest creditor, Anglo Irish Bank.

The court-appointed examiner, Michael McAteer, is to seek to push through a rescue package for two of the firms next Wednesday, while the other two companies, which control the Marriott Courtyard hotel in Galway and two petrol stations, are likely to be placed in receivership.

All four firms are subsidiaries of Mr Sweeney’s insolvent Black Shore Holdings firm, and between them employ 140 people in the oil, property and hotel sectors.

Quoted investment firm DCC Holdings was linked to a bid to take the firms out of examinership in a move that would have given the group access to Mr Sweeney’s network of filling stations in the west of Ireland. But a source close to DCC denied the firm had lent its support to the businessman.

The examiner has selected Sweeney Oil (Retail), which owns a petrol station and rented retail units in Clifden, Galway, as well as Sweeney Oil Service Stations, a trading company without assets, as the two firms most likely to survive the court petition for survival.

Anglo Irish Bank is not a creditor of Sweeney Oil Service Stations. Well-placed sources say the bank’s opposition to the rescue bids is likely to result in the examiner recommending a receiver be appointed over heavily indebted Slyne Properties, which controls the Marriot Courtyard hotel, and Sweeney Oil (Moycullen) which owns filling stations in Moycullen and Oranmore, Galway.

The bank is owed around €50 million by Mr Sweeney, and the institution has already installed a receiver over a number of assets in the Black Shore group after the holding firm failed in a bid for examinership last February.

In court, lawyers for Anglo Irish claimed there had been a loss of confidence in Mr Sweeney. Sources close to him claim a disastrous investment in the Shelbourne Hotel drove Black Shore deep into the red. Mr Sweeney has no further legal rights to his 33 per cent shareholding in the hotel, and it’s expected the loans on it will be subsumed by the National Asset Management Agency (Nama).