Is saving How-Do doable? Mark Garner gives Nick Jaspan three options

At that point Garner claims Jaspan took How-Do and its awards without consent and has since been running them unlawfully from a new company.

The dispute has become so heated that Jaspan called time on publishing How-Do yesterday until a resolution can be reached.

This morning Garner told The Drum that the dispute could be ended if Jaspan agrees to pay a sum for the How-Do website and its awards, returns the site and its assets to Garner and the other shareholders or agrees to close How-Do altogether.

However Jaspan believes he has every right to continue publishing How-Do, despite handing over 90% of the business to Garner in November, because he was "fraudulently misrepresented" at the time they did the deal.

In a meeting at How-Do's office on Friday, a weary Jaspan told The Drum he had not been made aware that Garner had planned to liquidate his own company Cpub when he signed the merger papers.

He said: "The idea was that we’d merge and put How-Do together with his Confidentials. What I didn’t know at the time was he was winding up his company, Cpub, which doesn’t even own any of the things we were told it did or any of the Confidential brands.

"The idea that I would be merging my company with a company that is being wound-up is risible. It’s bollocks. Absolute bollocks."

In response, Garner said Jaspan's argument was erroneous and that How-Do would have gone to the wall were it not for his intervention.

"The reality of the situation is that he did know. We’ve got the minutes of the board meetings. He was going to liquidate the company, end of. It doesn’t matter what we were doing with Cpub. The deal did not talk about any guarantees."

Today Jaspan said it would be inappropriate to comment on whether a resolution could be reached. But he did comment that he believed How-Do could be salvaged with investment.

He was more candid when he sat down with The Drum on Friday, expressing regret that he had entered into the deal with Confidential in the first place.

In hindsight he believes he may have been better off sacrificing How-Do's sister property site Place Northwest, which was hemorrhaging cash, in order to save How-Do.

He told The Drum: "I had no idea of what I was getting involved with. You scratch the surface and you find a nasty playground bully. We could have got rid of Place and started just with How-Do afresh. How-Do was profitable. It was getting tiresome that we’d make a good profit on How-Do and then lose it on Place.

“If I had done the due diligence it wouldn’t have happened. I wish to God I had. I wish I’d closed Place and got on with How-Do, because it’s a nice little operation we’ve got.”

Garner reiterated that he would be taking the matter to the police in the next 24 to 48 hours, alleging corporate theft.

"I think Mr Jaspan has realised how serious I am about this," he said. "We believe it is theft, it is passing off, and we’ll see if there is a law there that can do something about that."

The Drum asked Jaspan what the stalemate, and How-Do downtime, meant for his staff. He said they were "waiting to see whether a resolution can be reached".