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Versailles Group

defunct trade finance company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ7922616
Source-derived summary

Versailles Group was a British trade finance company that was engaged in mezzanine lending and gap finance. In December 1999, trading in Versailles shares was suspended and in early 2000, the company was placed in administrative receivership after fraud by its leaders was discovered at the company.

Versailles was listed on Alternative Investment Market in September 1995 and transferred to the main London Stock Exchange in October 1997. The legal form of each of the company's transactions was that Versailles bought and sold goods and raw materials, the substance of the transactions was that Versailles financed its clients’ purchases of raw materials and subsequent sales of goods. The company was a FTSE-250 company based in London.

Versailles Group Ltd., the Boston-based M&A boutique firm, was never affiliated with the bankrupt Versailles Group plc. Versailles Group, Ltd. was founded by Mr. Donald Grava in January of 1987.

History

Versailles Group plc was incorporated in 1990, providing trade finance primarily to businesses with poor credit history.

Editorial summary

“Versailles Group” enters the record as defunct trade finance company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Versailles, Group and defunct can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1999, 2000, 1995, 1997—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Versailles, Group and defunct.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Versailles Group” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Versailles, Group and defunct provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7922616. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2000, 1995 and 1997.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Versailles Group”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Versailles Group primary sources, Versailles Group archive and Versailles research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Versailles Group”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Versailles Group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.