He will have few friends at the moment. He's obviously got front and that has got him where he is today. When people do this to others who are trying hard to make a living word gets around and doors that would normally be open are firmly shut and bolted in his case.
On the other hand, not everyone who goes bankrupt are shisters. I personally know a few who've gone under through no real fault of their own. Down here ROK, the building services company went under a few months ago. A QS friend of mine is likely to lose quite a bit of money as a couple of his clients will go under as a result. One of them had just done £4k worth of work for them, finishing the day before they went under. He would normally have been paid in full in 28 days.
I also know a HMO landlord who went under thanks to his tenants taking the view that payment of rent was 'optional', despite their getting the money from the local councils for that very reason. He had 2 HMOs running. It all started with a rogue tenant in one not paying, then the others in the same building gradually decided that this was a good move to make. Then the tenants in the other HMO started down the same route. He reckoned tenants from both HMOs were communicating with each other as to how to avoid eviction etc. If he had come down hard on the one tenant right from the beginning and got him out he could have nipped it in the bud.
Also a mate of mine who was a plumber set up a LTD building company with another plumber. The other guy just wouldn't pull his weight and left the company over exposed to penalty clauses and often the quotes were too cheap. My mate reckoned that his partner was trying to get in with the clients and didnt' see a future for the partnership. Eventually the partnership was disolved and my mate took it on on his own. The mistake he made was to keep the ex partner on as an employee. He should have just kicked him out. He thought he needed him to see some of the jobs through, he (ex partner) just continued to be a liability and literally buried what was left of the company under a mountain of debt and poor cashflow.
Ex partner basically now can't get any work locally as it's widely known what he did, or rather didn't do. People may have been minded to give him the chance but he subsequently took the LTD company to a tribunal over unpaid wages. My mate didn't get notification of this so these were awarded against him to the tune of about £5k. However, my mate had the last laugh. The company was wound up with several debts to suppliers etc and about £90 in the bank. His lazy greedy ex partner got nothing and finally sunk any credibility he had left in trying to get it.
My mate then went to work for a regional firm. He did everything he could to keep the company going. He made sure people who couldn't survive the losses got paid. The debts that were left were owed to a handful of national merchants. Typically these accounts were for a few grand each.
