After several years of rapid growth and expansion GEMS suddenly went into administration and then liquidation. If you are interested you can read a lot of the legal mumbo jumbo here.
My memory of the process based on time spent with Scott back then was that GEMS was expanding so rapidly that they needed additional money to buy more equipment and fund the survey work that would bring in a lot of income by the end of the survey season. A group of investors came along and offered to lend them the money in exchange for substantial control of the company. When the money didn’t seem to be flowing back into their coffers fast enough, they panicked and started grabbing assets.
Scott had been contracting with GEMS for years, and was pretty casual about his billing and collection, so was caught off guard by their rapid decline and was out about a million pounds when all was said and done.