Besieged Maxwell: Give me 15 days

KEVIN Maxwell's comeback company, Telemonde, has been forced to delay its latest quarterly report to US stock market regulators. The news will fuel concerns that the telecoms company may be heading for insolvency.

Its shares, which traded above $8 three years ago, dropped 40% to 0.2 cents last week after the company told the Securities and Exchange Commission that it could not file paperwork on time because of turmoil in the global telecoms industry.

Maxwell, 43, recently denied that Telemonde was considering bankruptcy in the face of debts which, at the time of its last quarterly report, totalled $62.2m (£43.5m). Accumulated losses topped $100m. The company has been operating under a warning from its auditors for two years that it might not be able to survive as a going concern.

In its latest filing, Telemonde said there were 'a number of issues on which the company is seeking clarity, including obtaining definitive positions from third-party creditors, a number of whom have been affected by the recent turmoil in the telecommunications sector'.

The company said it believed 'sufficient of these issues will be resolved within 15 days' to enable it to file the reports required by US regulations.

Telemonde's rise and fall has represented another amazing round trip for Maxwell, who claimed he was so destitute during the collapse of his father's media empire that he needed legal aid to pay his lawyer's bills. Within four years of emerging as Britain's biggest-ever bankrupt, Kevin Maxwell sat atop a company worth £330m. Today, Telemonde's market value is just £260,000.