Court orders winding up defunct piling giant Walkers in case filed by Tokyo Cement Group firm

On an application made by Tokyo Supermix Ltd., the Commercial High Court of Colombo recently issued an order to wind up the defunct Walkers Piling Ltd., marking the conclusion of the piling giant in Sri Lanka.

The petitioner, a subsidiary of Tokyo Cement PLC, had filed a winding up petition in 2019 before the Commercial High Court in which the petitioner had alleged that Walkers Piling, a subsidiary of MTD Walkers PLC, had not honoured a statutory demand on a debt presented by the petitioner. 

Thereafter, the matter had come up several times before the Commercial High Court where other creditors had joined in to support the winding up petition against Walkers Piling. 

The petitioner set out in its petition that the assets of Walkers Piling, inter alia include assets located at various locations, construction yards, and construction sites. It was also set out before Court that the assets of Walkers Piling, are valued at over Rs. 1 billion and such assets are located at various sites around the country. 

The Commercial High Court Judge Pradeep Hettiarachchi had already granted an interim order in a previous instance under the same action, preventing Walkers Piling, and/or the Directors of the company from taking any steps to sell and/or dispose and/or alienate and/or create any encumbrance on the assets of the company. However, even though Walkers Piling had presented several settlement plans to the creditors who were present in court, they had failed to adhere to such plans on numerous occasions. 

The petitioner, Tokyo Supermix Ltd., was represented by Attorney-at-Law Nishan Sydney Premathiratne appearing on the instructions of Attorney-at-Law Gamindu Karunasena.

Sujith Rohana Attorney-at-Law appeared on behalf of the company ordered to be wound up, Walkers Piling on the instructions of Attorney-at-Law Kaushalya Thilakarathna.

Attorney-at-Law Lakshmanan Jeyakumar appeared on behalf of the intervening creditor, Unilanka Enterprises, on the instructions of Attorney-at-Law Subashini Jayasuriya.

Senaka De Seram appeared on behalf of the Intervening Creditor Seylan Bank PLC.