Quote:

Indeed!

And this is what the "Generation Amiga" article is saying. Just look at those numbers from 2015/2016 operations!

The numbers show that Hyperion has virtually no income whatsoever, it bleeds like a pig every year! 460,000 EUR in accumulated loss in 2015, and counting! This is made possible only through 456,000 EUR in short-term "other debts" (I read this as "out of the pocket of the owners"), 24,000 EUR in short-term loans from credit institutions and owing "suppliers" 52,500 EUR. A whopping 600,000 EUR in debt, which increased from the previous year, and most certainly has continued to increase since then! Because the business couldn't possibly have improved for Hyperion, even less sales of OS4 and a magnitude more legal fees!

No income, no assets worth mentioning, an operational loss running completely wild funded solely by 600,000 EUR loans! And again, this was back in 2015, in 2016 the loss had accumulated to 500,000 EUR, and Hyperion has had a few years with exploding legal activities since then!

And add to this:

1) These reports has not been audited by an external entity (page 3), the numbers are entirely what Hyperion wrote up themselves and sent in to the authorities.
2) The sums reported for 2014 in this 2015 report does not match what they reported about 2014 in previous reports. (page 1)
3) There are signs of fraudulent behavior in Hyperion: "The same discussion threads [239] also mentioned a tale of forgeries, blackmail and secret contracts. (So far, I received confirmation of different aspects of the story from a Hyperion partner and from a third-party, and I could listen to an audio sample where two parties involved cited the alleged forgery and how this allegedly led to a conspiracy to defraud some Hyperion creditors and partners, but not others, of future revenues.)"
4) They have failed to file these kind of reports for a long time, and the total picture is far from complete even now as we speak! That's not a good sign at all! It would be interesting to see the results of an external audit in Hyperion!

The "bankruptcy" is indeed strong with this one...





[ Edited by takemehomegrandma 27.07.2018 - 18:01 ]

Thanks to number6 for confirming that "some Belgian company" is not currently a legally operating business, and thanks to takemehomegrandma for proving translation to the documentation regarding said business showing it is indeed new information.

i personally find following "some Belgian company" to be relevant considering it the the brand licensor to MorphOS hardware partner A-Eonkit. I used the term bankrupt as here in the states it is often used commonly outside of it's strict legal definition. Maybe "insolvent former business" would have been better wording than "bankrupt".

[ Edited by redrumloa 27.07.2018 - 11:48 ]

As far as I'm concerned, the argument isn't that Hyperion WILL go bankrupt, but what the endgame is. Clearly Ben enjoys his legal games.

Rumours of sales of OS4 in violation the company suspension via a private Paypal account. (Which I deeply hope are untrue, as this may result in actual jail time for those involved.)

Giving away "free copies" of OS4 with AmigaFuture. Another attempt to circumvent the company suspension, or to make OS4 look better to a new buyer, or simply quietly plug in holes in the books? Who knows.

Now the claims from Ben that Hyperion are a limited liability company and not a CVBA, so the directors (or possibly just him) can escape any personal debt and leaving the liquidators with nothing but ashes. I swear sometimes it seems the guy thinks he can just walk away with the IP and leave everyone else with debt.

Ah well. It's not as if we ever tired of warning the OS4 guys what they were getting into, and it's not as if they ever listened...

Quote:

Maybe a simple thing as an audit could render jail time in this case. As said above, there are a couple of circumstantial signs of things not being quite in order.

Quote:

But what IP really? What does Hyperion really own that he could walk away with?

Quote:

It's a shame really that it has been mismanaged so terribly. Not counting the ones who wished their own customers would "die in fire" and such, I'm sure there have been some genuine people working on that IP who had good intentions.

> The generation Amiga article is new, the linked document [...] has a 2018 date.

Both irrelevant for what I wrote.

> It may reference accounts from 2015

Yes, it is Hyperion's annual account for 2015, so doesn't say anything about what happened after 2015, let alone current status. If the 2015 account revealed Hyperion having been bankrupt in 2015, it wouldn't be a *new* bankruptcy, because Hyperion was already declared insolvent in 2015 (and non-insolvent) two months later.

> what's the point of the document if the debt is not current debt?

You don't seem to get the concept of annual accounts.

> Does the document say the debt is paid?

No, it doesn't say anything about what happened after 2015. To know what happened after 2015, have a look into the 2016 account filed two days after the 2015 account and linked to by me in comment #2.

You often fall in the trap of semantics, Andreas. Like this time. Try look at the bigger picture, the meaning behind the words. Hyperion's shit is not in order, this much is obvious. They have yet to file accounts for 2009-2014 and 2017, and *this fact alone* is reasonable cause for sounding the alarm. The years leading up to 2015 meant 460,000 EUR in accumulated loss and 600,000 EUR in debt, which is a lot for a company living on selling OS4 copies in the lower hundreds every other year. Post-bankruptcy in 2015 ("oh, it was merely a clerical error") there was some restructuring and possibly another source of issued capital and/or stakeholder loans, but it has most certainly meant *even less* income from business in combination with skyrocketing legal fees, even if Ben Hermans does a lot of shit pro-bono which he of course does.

> You often fall in the trap of semantics, Andreas. Like this time.
> Try look at the bigger picture, the meaning behind the words.

You often fail to grasp what I actually wrote in reply to what I actually quoted, like this time. You then try to apply some arbitrary meaning to it that's just not there, except in your head.
To recap for anybody who tends to intentionally or unintentionally misread what I write:

1. An annual account filed for 2015 revealing a big debt for 2015 doesn't hint at *another* bankruptcy or insolvency of Hyperion when Hyperion was already declared insolvent in 2015. If at all, it would be the *same* insolvency.
2. To judge Hyperion's current (2018) financial situation, it doesn't make sense to view the 2015 account when there is also the 2016 account available. 2016 is less long ago than 2015, right? And even inferring from the 2016 account may not necessarily lead to correct conclusions regarding the current (2018) situation.
3. Implying that there's no point in filing the annual account for 2015 if the 2015 debt is not the current (2018) debt reveals a significant ignorance regarding the concept of annual accounts and the reasons for filing them.

There's no meaning beyond these exact points in what I've written in this thread so far. You're welcome to discuss them but please abstain from putting any arbitrary meaning behind my words.

> a limited liability company [...], so the directors (or possibly just him) can escape any personal debt

This would be the shareholders, not the directors.

>> In Hyperion's current state, all it would need is for a creditor to
>> apply for dissolution, and they would truly enter bankruptcy.

> this is what the "Generation Amiga" article is saying.

No, it is not saying this.

> Just look at those numbers from 2015/2016 operations!

Unfortunately, the 2016 numbers are neither mentioned in nor linked from the article.

> 600,000 EUR in debt, which [...] most certainly has continued to increase since then!

Fortunately, that's verifyable by looking at the 2016 account :-)

> the total picture is far from complete even now as we speak!

Exactly.

Quote:

Which shareholders? There are only two guys in the company!

>>> a limited liability company [...], so the directors (or possibly just him) can escape any personal debt

>> This would be the shareholders, not the directors.

>> Which shareholders?

The shareholders of Hyperion Entertainment CVBA. While Hyperion's share structure is not publicly known, it is a safe bet to assume that Ben Hermans is the majority shareholder (he even says so himself). Liability is with the shareholders, not with the directors (unless they possess any shares, of course).

> There are only two guys in the company!

There are two *directors*, who may or may not be shareholders at the same time. None of them is Ben Hermans, as you may have noticed. We went through this already:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=11939&forum=3

Quote:

Section 4

Quote:

Hope that helps.

#6

>> Liability is with the shareholders, not with the directors

> Section 4
> [...] Hope that helps.

Yes, thanks. So nobody is personally liable in a CVBA, not even the shareholders. KennyR's "CVBA" vs. "limited liability company" makes even less sense then.

Quote:

At the current state, if Hyperion were to go down, Ben would lose every cent he put into it. So would the shareholders. They wouldn't be liable directly to pay the company's debts, but then I never said they would be; not that it matters, if Ben has taken out loans of his own to put into Hyperion, he ends up in debt just the same.

You know he's just playing games to try to get at least some of his money back out of this, don't you? There's no way a company that may be in as much as a million of debt buy selling a 20 euro OS to a community of 300 people, can ever come back from that.

>> KennyR's "CVBA" vs. "limited liability company" makes even less sense then.

> At the current state, if Hyperion were to go down, Ben would lose every cent
> he put into it.

Now what would be different regarding this if Hyperion was a "limited liability company" instead of a CVBA? How would that help Hermans?

> So would the shareholders.

...beside the majority shareholder, which happens to be Ben Hermans.

> You know he's just playing games to try to get at least some of his money
> back out of this, don't you?

It sounds plausible at least.

Quote:

To be clear. I linked to Esther's statement on who is not liable.
I did not provide you with reference as to who is or might be.

#6

>>> Section 4
>>> [...] Hope that helps.

>> Yes, thanks. So nobody is personally liable in a CVBA, not even the shareholders.

> To be clear. I linked to Esther's statement on who is not liable.
> I did not provide you with reference as to who is or might be.

Yes, understood. It's just that nobody occurs to me who could be liable if not even the shareholders are, who are the ones that are (limitedly) liable in a company with (limited) liability.

Quote:

Quote:

In that case we would not be able to accurately speak as to who is a non-liable shareholder, imo.

Quote:

Got a link? afaik he has stated in print that he is a "major" shareholder, not "majority" shareholder.

Source of quotes above

#6

>> Hyperion's share structure is not publicly known

> In that case we would not be able to accurately speak as to who is
> a [...] shareholder, imo.

Yes, that's why nobody has attempted to do so in this thread so far, I guess. If Hyperion directors are to be believed, Ben Hermans is a shareholder, and if Ben Hermans is to be believed, "Ben Hermans & family" were the sole owners of Hyperion Entertainment CVBA at least until about 5 years ago (which was before the 2015/2016 restructuring phase).

>> it is a safe bet to assume that Ben Hermans is the majority shareholder
>> (he even says so himself).

> afaik he has stated in print that he is a "major" shareholder, not "majority" shareholder.

You are correct. It's my personal assumption that he's not only a major shareholder, but also the majority shareholder :-)

Quote:

I assume you refer to this?

Source

I'm sure you realize that this post was edited after I reminded him of the facts in post #165?

The addition begins "at one time..."

#6

>> if Ben Hermans is to be believed, "Ben Hermans & family" were the
>> sole owners of Hyperion Entertainment CVBA at least until about
>> 5 years ago (which was before the 2015/2016 restructuring phase).

> I assume you refer to this? [...]

Indeed.

> I'm sure you realize that this post was edited after I reminded him
> of the facts in post #165? The addition begins "at one time..."

Yes, I do. And going by Evert Carton's amigaworld.net postings, I'm pretty sure he doesn't currently hold any Hyperion shares. He might have held his share up until Hyperion's transformation from VOF into CVBA in 2009, or even longer considering he is listed as having been a "board member" until January 2011.


Edit: Apparently, Evert Carton held Hyperion shares until 2018.

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 19.07.2021 - 17:21 ]

@thread

striking off removed

#6

Quote:

only for those with interest in following this

#6

Quote:

Well, one has to wonder what is being referred to by the statement many years later:
Quote:

Source

#6