A court yesterday issued a winding-up order on Hang Fung Jewellery - a unit of 3D-Gold Jewellery Holdings, renowned for its HK$38 million golden toilet - after being told the company was hopelessly insolvent and incapable of devising a restructuring.
The winding-up proceeding was brought against Hang Fung in October last year by Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp and provisional liquidator Deloitte over two bank debts - one of HK$4.2 million and another for US$62.4 million.
The order by Madam Justice Susan Kwan Shuk-hing in the Court of First Instance was not opposed.
Hang Fung Jewellery is a subsidiary of 3D-Gold, which was formerly known as Hang Fung Gold Technology.
Founder Lam Sai-wing, who died in September last year, had the golden commode built to commemorate his boyhood hero, Vladimir Lenin, who once wrote that after the victory of socialism, gold should be used to make washrooms.
The toilet is registered by the Guinness World Records as the most expensive in the world. On its doors are engraved pharaohs, Greek gods, harp-playing angels, cherubs and a cat and dog poking their noses out of a kennel.
Trading in the shares of 3D-Gold was suspended in September last year and in December the companies underwent a restructuring to survive.