The Hamiltonian Hotel and Island Club Ltd. has been given more time to come up with an offer to clear its debts after a judge adjourned the case until next month.

At the latest hearing in Supreme Court on Friday, Judge Geoffrey Bell decided to adjourn the matter to October 9 after hearing representations from Robin Mayor, representing the Ministry of Finance, who had applied to wind up the company, as reported in The Royal Gazette in July.

The Ministry of Finance originally applied to appoint the Official receiver as provisional liquidator of the Pembroke resort, arguing that it owes more than $1.4 million in unpaid taxes at the first hearing held three weeks ago, with the case being adjourned to Friday to allow the company to get the necessary financing to pay off its liabilities.

At Friday's hearing, Ms Mayor told the court that both clients of Jairaj Pachai, who has been representing the company, and Marc Daniels, representing Stephan McGee, who is claiming ownership of the business, had indicated they wanted to make an offer to clear the Hamiltonian's debts and the Ministry of Finance and Official Receiver had been persuaded to seek a further adjournment.

She said Mr. Pachai indicated his agreement with the proposed adjournment.

Mr. Daniels concurred with the request to adjourn the matter for five weeks.

At the first hearing in August, Ms Mayor said the Hamiltonian owed her client $1.4 million in taxes, not taking into account the ongoing non-payment of Government taxes amounting to several hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as other claims, including one for $135,000 from the Ministry of Works & Engineering and another for some $40,000 from Wakefield Quin.

The Hamiltonian's former owner Harold Stavisky, who died in December 2004, bequeathed the business to his son Matthew Lawrence Stavisky, who in turn, had granted Mr. McGee power of attorney over the estate.

But the management of the resort, headed by Douglas Burgess and Margaret Abbadi, is also claiming ownership of the company.