Creditors have been taking out mercantile insurance, the reason why the opreation has come to a grinding halt is that creditors can't get any more cover, and have pulled the plug on supplies.
The HMRC lump will all be PAYE and VAT, dumping staff means no more PAYE and real heavy claims on the redundancy payments office - so - it works against them if they drive the firm into voluntary liquidation. The company may be insolvent, if Goodwill is valued low at this time. Do they have any freeholds ? I'm too busy to comb thru their accounts.
Creditors also know that if so called white knights, but more akin to vultures, are called in, the likes of the big firms I'm affraid. They will use the cloak of the '88 insolvency act to wind up their own massive administration fees, and where even book-keeping duties are charged at 2k per day, and the loyal suppliers will get rather less than their accademically calculated 21p in the £. The vultures force distress selling to pay their own fees !
The company hasn't traded profitably for 5 years, so there will be a fat corporation tax loss accumulating to carry forward and offset. But in a cessation year - it is worth more.
Creditors will be well advised to keep the bank (subject to any debentures or any other floating deals) and particularly the vultures out of it. Simon Baile and his fellow shareholders could be the biggest single creditor, therefore his best move is to join forces with the suppliers and swing the vote. In the meantime, he needs to re-work the tax for a smaller going concern, and then go cap in hand to the Revenue.
The VAT element at HMRC will be a bigger hassle - Trading out of that sort of indebtedness is a bugger. It is a stealth tax, and there are no offsets in sold merchandise. Inspectors are not very patient (not allowed to be) in these dark days.
Make the Bankers stump-up the loans, (or take a rain check for restructuring) they gambled with our cash and deposits
and now they are relatively free again - Duh. I'd rather have good wine on our shores, than thousands of acres of worthless real estate, duff derivatives, and naff sub prime assets 1000's of miles away.
Got that off my chest - Sorry.
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I spose the logic of my expletive rant (edited on reflection) being this..... that Oddbins's goodwill £ for £ comparatively speaking, (and for wine luvvers 
) is worth one hell of a lot more, than the $ billions of sub-prime shite we were served up with; and, at least we can see, and then utilise it !