Melbourne’s famed Lobster Cave restaurant enters administration
The lavish seafood restaurant in Melbourne’s southeast has collapsed into insolvency, with administrators appointed to the company earlier this week.
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The famed Lobster Cave restaurant in Melbourne’s southeast has collapsed into insolvency.
Lob Nominees, which owns the business name Lobster Cave, as well as the lavish seafood restaurant’s website, entered administration on Monday, a notice lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission reveals.
Insolvency expert Stephen Dixon of Hamilton Murphy has been appointed administrator.
The administrator is responsible for assessing the company’s financial position, presenting options to creditors, and overseeing its operations to optimise returns – potentially by rescuing the business or facilitating a liquidation.
The Lobster Cave, which has been trading since 1987, employs more than 60 people.
Vasilios Fergadiotis, better known as Bill Ferg, who has run the Lobster Cave in Beaumaris for close to four decades, has suffered significant financial woes in recent months after several of his businesses collapsed.
Mr Ferg told the Herald Sun the Lobster Cave will continue to trade during the administration process.
“We are working hard not to be a late casualty of Covid,” he said.
“The impact was enormous and we continue to suffer the effects of those Covid lockdowns and restrictions as these issues arising from Covid made every other challenge since then more challenging.
“We have faith that with the support of customers, creditors, staff and the community, that Lobster Cave will survive and serve many generations to come.”
Mr Ferg was recently hit with a near $1m bankruptcy claim linked to the takeover of a former business, as previously revealed by the Herald Sun, with the matter still before the Federal Court in Melbourne.
Creditors owed more than $7m are preparing to vote on an eleventh-hour offer put forward by the hospitality veteran as he attempts to dodge bankruptcy.
If creditors reject the deal, known as a personal insolvency agreement, Mr Ferg can be forced into bankruptcy.
He would be required to step down as director from his various companies and give up his shareholdings in them.
It comes after Mr Ferg avoided having a liquidator appointed to the Lobster Cave in November last year after non-bank lender and buy-now, pay-later service provider Humm Group launched legal action against Lob Nominees.
Flexicommercial – a subsidiary of Humm Group – originally launched the application for the winding up order in August.
Winding up notices are usually issued by creditors of a company in order to enforce the payment of a debt.
If the debt is found legitimate and a company is unable to pay, the business is usually placed into liquidation by the court.
The claim against Lob Nominees, heard in New South Wales’ Supreme Court, was settled after the two parties reached a last-minute agreement.
Mr Ferg told the Herald Sun at the time that the matter had been “resolved to everyone’s satisfaction”.
Analysis of liquidation reports reveals several of Mr Ferg’s other companies, Extramile Trading, Green Earth Industries and Marsh Dairy, all collapsed last year with a combined near $17m in debt.
The Lobster Cave made headlines in 2017 when then Opposition Leader Matthew Guy was spotted having dinner with an alleged Melbourne mafia boss in an incident dubbed “lobster with the mobster”.
An elderly driver accidentally ploughed through the Beaumaris restaurant in May last year, leaving customers diving for cover.
Mr Ferg was contacted for comment.
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