The company's main creditor, the National Investment Bank of Jamaica (NIBJ), in confirming the receivership, said last week that Touchpoint went belly up after it lost a major client and failed to secure another to replace the revenue stream.

"Touchpoint Centres International (Jamaica) Limited lost its major client in September 2005 and decided to close its operations," said Rex James, president of the NIBJ in last week's press statement.  "Ken Tomlinson of Business Recovery Services Limited has been appointed receiver and will oversee the sale of the assets to interested parties."

At the time of the NetServ collapse in 2002, it was announced that a new purchaser had been found to help secure the over $240 million that had been feared lost with that company.

It now emerged that the new owner, Touchpoint, had made a downpayment of $27 million and had secured a loan from NIBJ, payable over seven years at 4.25 per cent per year, as the basis for the acquisition of the NetServ operation.

The NIBJ had required Touchpoint to make the cash downpayment in order to clear NetServ's $28.2-million (US$600,000) debt to the American computer supplier, Activelink, which had supplied it with computer equipment.

It is not clear how much of the debt to NIBJ, Touchpoint paid during the three years that it operated the IT centre, located at the Mutual Life Twin Towers in Kingston, where it is reported to have employed over 200 workers.  The debt should have been paid off between September 2002 and September 2009.

However, a review of NIBJ's financial statements up to March 2004, (the most recent available) did not throw any additional light on this matter.  Nowhere in the report was there any mention of payments except for $229,000 in 2003.

Indeed, questions are now being raised about this deal - with Jamaica Labour Party spokesperson on industry, commerce and investment, Senator Shirley Williams, last week seeking to know if "Touchpoint had honoured its commitments in respect of the purchase of Netserv's assets and the circumstances of its employees".

NIBJ's executives were unavailable for comment on Friday due to early closure, and Sunday Finance was unable to get in contact with Touchpoint representatives.

However, in response to Williams' statement, technology minister Phillip Paulwell confirmed that Touchpoint had folded, but declared that the NIBJ was currently in negotiations with another call service company to take over the operations.

"I understand that it (Touchpoint) lost its major contract in the United States and had to close its operations," Paulwell told Sunday Finance.  The minister said that NIBJ had opted not to announce the closure earlier so as not to prejudice the negotiations.

Paulwell said he was aware that the NIBJ was monitoring the situation, and that while he was not the minister responsible for the NIBJ, the entity should have been ensuring that Touchpoint serviced the loans it had inherited from Netserv.

Netserv was one of the IT start-ups that secured huge loans from the government's INTEC fund, but went belly-up in a major scandal that exposed failure to conduct due diligence by Jamaican officials.

The industry suffered in the wake of the 2001 collapse of NetServ that figured prominently in Paulwell's plans to generate 40,000 new jobs over a three-year period.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magazines/Business/html/20051217T220000-0500_94896_OBS_THE_GHOST_OF_NETSERV_.asp