Mark Freeman, the former chief executive of collapsed outsourcing agency Charity Business, has launched a new consultancy called Mark Freeman and Associates.

According to its website, Mark Freeman and Associates offers management consultancy, investment consulting, change management and collaboration.

Its personnel are “independent financial and management consultants with over 25 years experience providing services specifically to charities” and it has clients ranging from “small charities to well-known household names”.

Its contact details list Freeman; his wife Val Austin – a former non-executive director of Charity Business; and James Parker, a former employee. The registered office is Freeman’s home address and a Gloucester office in Cheltenham is also listed.

There is no registered company number on the site. 

Asked by civilsociety.co.uk why he had set up the new consultancy and what his plans were, Freeman said it was “pretty self-evident” and declined to comment further.

Parent company directors spent own money on liquidation

Separately, the two remaining directors of CBusiness Holdings, the parent company of Charity Business, put the parent company into voluntary creditors’ liquidation last week at their own personal expense. Chairman Bruce Keith and non-executive director Steve Round appointed RSM Tenon as liquidators on 25 January.

Sources close to the situation said the directors chose not to wait for compulsory liquidation even though it would have cost them nothing, because it would have taken several weeks longer and they wanted to do the right thing by the Charity Business clients.

Steve Round, who is also chairman of the Big Issue Foundation, confirmed this to civilsociety.co.uk today. “We tried to act morally and responsibly,” he said. “Having got to this stage, where nobody wanted to be, it was the only thing we could do.”

However, because they were not directors of the active subsidiaries CBusiness Ltd and CBusiness Consultancy Ltd,  they could not take the same action for those companies. As a result, their hands are tied with regard to getting any of the data back for former Charity Business clients.

Round said they took legal advice and were advised against trying to retrieve the data. “We are directors of the holding company only and the data is an asset of CBusiness Ltd,” he said.

The two subsidiary companies had no directors.

According to one source, CBusiness Ltd and CBusiness Consultancy Ltd are now “slowly trundling down a slow court-driven process to compulsory liquidation”, whereby the government’s Official Receiver is likely to be appointed as liquidator.