Teatro faces closure threat
Teatro, the London restaurant and member's club owned by footballer-turned-restaurateur Lee Chapman and his wife, actress Leslie Ash, may be forced to close.
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Customs and Excise has issued a petition for the winding up of Teatro Club and Restaurant Ltd.
It has the power to close businesses and seize assets to recover outstanding VAT payments and is first in any line of creditors because it is recovering public money.
The Shaftesbury Avenue venue, opened in 1997, has struggled to make money.
In the year to March 2001, its last filed accounts, it made a profit of just £2,570 on sales of £1.8m and carried forward debts of £667,172. A second Teatro, in Leeds, went into liquidation last year.
Chapman claimed a Companies Court hearing that had been scheduled by Customs and Excise for 11 December had now been postponed after talks and that both side were optimistic of reaching an agreement out of court.
But a spokeswoman for Customs and Excise said the date for the Companies Court hearing still stood, although talks with Teatro were continuing.