Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1512115
13 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 NOVEMBER 2023 NEWS THE Maltese courts have ordered the liquidation of the company that owns the defunct St Philip's Hospital in Santa Venera. Shuttered for well over a decade, the liquidation order comes from a request by HSBC Malta which said the Gold- en Shepherd company, which is partly owned by medical doctor Frank Portel- li's Private Health Investment Limited, was unable to pay back its €12 million in debts. The company's last filed statements for 2007 registered losses of €160,000. The hospital shut its doors in 2010. In 2018, the company had declared that it was unable to pay court registration fees of €60,000, apart from the outstand- ing ground rent for its sole physical as- set, the St Philip's Hospital. Portelli was said in court to have re- sisted signing a €7 million constitution of debt in favour of HSBC, given that in 2010 he was hoping to sell his hospital in negotiations with the government's Foundation for Medical Services. HSBC Bank said that the €12 million debt comprised of €5.6 million in inter- est, but that with ground rent not being paid by Golden Shepherd, the company risked losing the property title to the landowner. HSBC also told the Court that it had to seek the liquidation of the company seeing that there was no reasonable out- come for a sale of the property, and that Dr Frank Portelli had also listed himself as a personal creditor of Golden Shep- herd by way of unpaid salaries as CEO. Outstanding dues were owed to GO plc (€34,000), HSE Laboratory Services (€97,000), ARMS (€500,000), Enemalta (€428,000), and €181,000 in ground rent. On his part, Frank Portelli told the Court that St Philip's Hospital had run aground after the introduction of the electricity surcharge in 2005, saying the hospital's bills had increased by 190% and that the company could not benefit from a capping on the bills. In 2010, he started negotiations with the Foundation for Medical Services for the sale of the hospital, which asset was valued at around €18 million, without the value of its medical equipment or goodwill. But despite agreement on a po- tential eight-year lease, an eleventh-hour decision was taken not to proceed. When the deal fell through in 2012, Portelli toyed with the prospect of suing the government for damages. The deal would have paved the way for the con- version of this private 100-bed hospital, which had closed down after running in- to financial difficulties, to be converted into a rehabilitation facility. Portelli said the last valuations of the hospital property, which covers a 10,000 square-metre plot of land with a gross developed area of 7,500sq.m, tagged it at €35 million. Portelli is a former Nationalist Party MP and in 2017 had unsuccessfully con- tested the PN leadership after it was va- cated by Simon Busuttil. MALTESE companies are the most likely in the European Un- ion to resort to labour imported from outside the bloc to address skill shortages, a Eurobarometer survey reveals. The information is derived from a survey targeting SMEs in all EU member states, including 253 in Malta carried out in October. The survey asked companies whether they have "tried to hire foreign talent to solve their com- pany's skill shortage problems". While only 16% of companies in all EU 27 member states said that they have tried to employ non-EU workers to address these shortages, the percentage among Maltese companies surveyed in- creased to 32%. Malta was the on- ly country where more than 30% of companies had tried to employ third-country nationals, followed by the Netherlands (25%), Poland (22%), and Italy (21%). Moreover, while 14% of com- panies in the entire European Union tried to employ workers from other EU member states, the percentage rises to a stagger- ing 37% among Maltese compa- nies. Demand for EU labour was only higher in Luxembourg (49%) and Austria (40%). However, the survey showed that 35% of Mal- tese companies still did not find adequate candidates when trying to employ people from other EU member states. The survey also shows that Mal- tese companies were the third most likely in the EU to say they found it very difficult to find staff with the right skills. In fact, 49% of Maltese compa- nies said so compared to 57% of companies in Greece and 50% of companies in Bulgaria. The least likely to report skills shortages were the Finns (21%), the Swedes (20%), and the Estonians (20%). But despite reporting difficulties in addressing skill shortages, Mal- tese companies tend to find staff more quickly than in most other countries. In fact, 21% of Maltese companies, compared to 17% in the entire EU, report finding staff with the right skills in less than a month. The percentage who reports taking three months or more to find the right staff is also lower in Malta; 44% compared to 49% in the whole EU. Still, Maltese businesses are more likely to report job vacan- cies in their companies. While 44% of EU companies report hav- ing no need for further staff, the percentage drops to just 26% in Malta. A previous survey by the same agency had already shown that a quarter of Maltese businesses employ workers from outside the EU. The findings placed Maltese companies as the third most like- ly in the EU to hire non-EU work- ers. Specifically, 16% of Maltese companies exclusively employ non-EU workers in person, while 3% rely solely on remote workers from outside the EU. Additional- ly, 6% of Maltese SMEs hire both in-person and online non-EU workers. Maltese companies most likely in EU to import workers from outside the bloc Court orders liquidation for St Philip's Hospital over €12 million debts MATTHEW VELLA mvella@mediatoday.com.mt JAMES DEBONO jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt A third of Maltese companies have tried to hire non-EU workers to address shortages in the labour force The now-defunct St Philips Hospital is owned by Frank Portelli, who in 2017 unsuccessfully contested the leadership of the Nationalist Party