Interactive Brand Development (IBD), the parent company of crippled payment processor iBill, has hired advisory firm Corporate Revitalization Partners LLC (CRP) to turn the company around, AVNOnline.com has confirmed.
“I can publicly say that we’ve been engaged by IBD and iBill to assist them in a variety of operating issues,” CRP managing partner Scott Avila told AVNOnline.com.
“Obviously, they’ve experienced some challenges they’re trying to deal with. We’re trying to assist them in those challenges.”
CRP was initially retained on February 12. IBD made the announcement February 23 via a press release on the Business Wire. February 23 was also the date that Chi Chi LaRue’s CCLR Internet filed a civil suit against iBill and several of the company’s principles for contract indebtedness and damages, a story first reported by AVNOnline.com. At least one other industry news organization ran iBill’s press release earlier this week without confirming the company’s plans.
The release also refers media inquiries to Los Angeles-based communications firm Sitrick & Company, but when contacted the firm said they no longer had a working relationship with IBD or iBill.
“We haven’t worked with them for months, but they continue to put our name on their news releases for some reason. We’ve told them repeatedly that you cannot put our name on releases we didn’t have anything to do with, and yet they’ve continued to do so,” former iBill publicist Tammy Taylor told AVNOnline.com.
Regardless, IBD has signed CRP through at least June 12. After that, either party can terminate the agreement. CRP was initially retained in a very limited capacity, Avila said, but that role has expanded.
“Some of the participants and parties here I knew from a prior transaction that I was involved in,” Avila said, “so I’m familiar with some of those characters. When they called me back in this situation it was truly around more of an operational assessment and recommendation, and that role has been expanded.”
Avila is the former chief restructuring officer (CRO) for Penthouse, another IBD company. He confirmed that iBill is in fact still in operation. “I was there last week. There is a business there,” he said. AVNOnline.com also spoke this week with the frustrated owner of an affiliate program who confirmed that iBill continues to process recurring memberships for customers of their program without making full restitution for those transactions.
IBD’s press release also noted that on February 10 the company withdrew its appeal of AMEX’s decision to delist it. As a result, the company’s common stock has been delisted from AMEX. IBD intends to move for a listing of its common shares on the OTCBB or NASDAQ SmallCap in the immediate future, the release said.
Neither IBD CEO Steve Markley nor iBill CEO Charles Prast returned calls seeking comment.
