IPA exclusive industry update from Insolvency Insider
IPA Insolvency Practitioner newsletter, June 2024
A specially curated selection of the top stories for IPA members from Insolvency Insider Editor, Dina Kovacevic. More information on all the stories and the link to subscribe to the newsletter is here.
Recent insolvencies
- Intelligent Money, a Nottingham-based Sipp provider which administers over £1 billion of client assets, entered administration on 28 May after being sanctioned by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) over some of the investments it allowed within its Sipps. Anticipating the financial liabilities associated with this and other similar complaints, Intelligent Money’s directors obtained insolvency advice and appointed Richard Heis and Edward Boyle of Interpath Advisory as joint administrators. Fortunately, a pre-pack deal will see the entire Intelligent Money team and all of its client accounts transfer to pension administrator Quai.
- Cazoo, a London-based online car retailer, entered voluntary administration on 21 May. Founded in 2018 by serial internet entrepreneur Alex Chesterman and backed by some of the leading global technology investors, the company flourished during the COVID era as consumers could buy, sell or finance a car entirely online with delivery or collection in as little as 72 hours. In 2021, the company went public with an estimated valuation of more than £5.0 billion, and by 2022 annual turnover had reached £1.3 billion. Despite this growth, however, the company has been unable to achieve profitability and its losses have grown. As a result, the company struggled to attract the additional capital required to stay afloat. In March 2024 the company announced that it was pivoting to a marketplace business model in an attempt to achieve profitability, but it did not have enough financial runway to see the strategic shift through. Matthew Mawhinney and David Soden of Teneo were appointed as joint administrators and have stated that the pivoted marketplace model was “performing ahead of expectations, with strong dealer sign-up”, providing “an opportunity to secure a sale of the business over coming weeks.”
- Events By B3 Ltd, the company that organises and runs The Yorkshire Dales Food and Drink Festival, the UK’s largest food and drink festival, was placed into liquidation on 14 May. Founded in 2015, the three day festival typically attracted over 30,000 visitors and 200 exhibitors and offered a diverse schedule of bands, street food, pop-up restaurants, workshops, food tasting and masterclasses from leading food and drink celebrities. The festival is estimated to generate around £7.0 million for the local economy. Unfortunately, the event in 2023 was seriously affected by flooding which led to unforeseen costs and made the event loss making. This had a major impact on cash flow for the company in the latter part of 2023 and continued into 2024. With 2024 ticket revenue also behind plan, the difficult decision was made to cease trading. Jonathan Amor and Richard Oddy of Azets were appointed joint liquidators and will be taking steps to market the assets for sale. Unless an interested party comes forward to resurrect the festival, the 2024 festival in July will not take place.
Insights
- The Audit Reform Lab analyses the audit reports of the largest 250 publicly traded companies that collapsed between 2010 and 2022, finding that, among other things, three in four audit reports failed to provide a warning in the year prior to the collapse, with many of these companies even declaring dividends despite strong indicators of insolvency risk.
- Jo Milner and David Buchler share their musings on recent market activity, including the Cazoo administration, where they warn that those tempted to jump-start the company at a knockdown price will have their work cut out for them as the wafer-thin margins available to the industry make it a tough balancing game for a high volume e-commerce company.
- James Bryan of Buchler Phillips examines challenges faced by the logistics sector and suggests ways for transport and logistics businesses to operate as efficiently as possible in order to secure the long-term survival of this critical link in the supply chain.
Please note that guest content does not necessarily represent the views of the IPA.