Embattled developer Liam Carroll's companies have been offering to pay some of their creditors off by asking them to accept a discount of nearly 20% on their bills.

Representatives of the developer's Royceton company rang some of those owed money by the developer asking them to resubmit their invoices to reflect the discount so as to ensure prompt payment.

Royceton is one of seven companies that are vital cogs in Carroll's Zoe Group empire, which has debts of €1.3bn and which were refused a second petition for examinership last week. Dutch-owned ACC is seeking to wind up two companies involved in the Zoe group, which together owe the bank €136m.

Carroll's counsel, Bill Shipsey, said last week that they will spend tomorrow morning considering an appeal to the Supreme Court of the decision to Mr Justice Frank Clarke to refuse the examinership bid.

Clarke said in his judgment that the "revised business plan focuses on what was said to be an attempt to restore the company to a position where it was able to meet its liabilities as they fell due". He said "it did not seem to me that that plan stood up to analysis".

Irony of ironies, it seems that the upswing predicted for the economy in the coming years played a key part in Clarke's decision to refuse the petition. The improving economic environment will lead to higher interest rates and the judge pointed out that every 0.5% increase in those rates added €4m to the group's annual interest bill.

As a result, the judge said, additional interest payments of €26m may have to be made in 2011 by the group if it remains in business, based on an analysis by economist Jim Power of Friends First.

"It seems likely that the risk exposure of the Zoe Group may be even larger" because some of the fixed interest loans might expire, sending the interest bill higher still.

The judge said there was "likely to be more risk on the downside in respect of residential property letting income than on the upside" in relation to the group's plans to let out unsold apartments, and it was "speculative in the extreme" to suggest there might be more lettings on the commercial side of offices where heads of terms of agreement have not even been reached.

"In all circumstances," he said, "it seems to me that it is likely that the values projected for the Zoe Group properties as of late 2010 are somewhat higher than are likely to actually be available at that time."

The Zoe Group had its first petition refused by the High Court and an appeal rejected by the Supreme Court. It was then granted permission to bring a second petition, which was the one rejected by Mr Justice Clarke.

The judge extended the court's protection afforded to the seven companies within the Zoe Group until the winding-up petitions are heard on Monday. However, he made it clear that if an appeal is made by the Zoe Group to the Supreme Court it must be heard early, preferably within 24 hours.

The expectation is that the banks will now try and buy out ACC's loans to Carroll. Department of Finance sources say the loans will not be part of Nama because the loan had to exist on the balance sheet of a participating bank on 31 December 2008, according to EU rules. However, rumours continue to circulate in property circles that, if a receiver or liquidator is appointed, then an attempt will be made to sell the loans or the repossessed sites on to Nama.