Back in December Twitter and its subsidiary TweetDeck were fined for late accounts filing by the U.K. registrar of companies, Companies House. Since then Twitter has filed its accounts but TweetDeck has not and Companies House has now put forward a proposal to strike it off the register — as spotted by SkyNews.
A spokesperson for Companies House told Sky News: “This is a non-compliance issue and a compulsory strike-off action has commenced. TweetDeck is still yet to file. That means they have 99 days to file up-to-date accounts or face being dissolved and struck-off the register.”
TweetDeck’s listing on the Companies House website includes the proposal to strike the company off, and also details that its account filing has been overdue since the end of September last year:
At the time of writing Twitter had not responded to a request for comment on the reason for the late filing at its subsidiary business. Update: Twitter told TechCrunch it has no comment to make at this time.
SkyNews reports that TweetDeck will have now been fined twice: an initial £375 penalty for failing to file its accounts in September, and a second automatic £375 penalty for failing to file accounts by the second cut-off of December 31. The news agency adds that if TweetDeck’s accounts are not filed shortly it may be fined a total of £1,500, and be subject to debt recovery procedures and court action.
Twitter acquired TweetDeck, a U.K. startup, back in May 2011 for a price-tag we reported as $40 million. The then third-party Twitter client had become popular with Twitter power users, and there were also rumours that it was on the verge of being acquired by Bill Gross’ UberMedia — a possibility that evidently made Twitter uncomfortable.
Of course, now that TweetDeck is a part of Twitter — reflected in its logo: ‘TweetDeck by Twitter’ — there is a question mark over whether it needs to continue as a separate corporate entity to Twitter.