Envy goes into administration

Administrators from Leonard Curtis have been appointed on the business.

Envy, based in west London had 21 stand-alone stores of which three had been recently closed and eight were closed on the appointment of administrators.

The administrators will continue to trade the remaining 10 stores based across England and Scotland from Thurrock to Glasgow.

The business had recently been acquired from its previous owner, John Kinnaird, by a consortium of investors.

For the year to January 2010 the business achieved a turnover of £27.2m.

Posted at 08:23PM Apr 19, 2010 by Kelly Board in Insolvency  |  Comments[0]

Corporate Insolvency Falls

According to new figures, the number of companies going into Administration has fallen in the first quarter of this year compared to the back end of 2009.  The research, done by PricewaterhouseCoopers, has shown that 4251 companies became insolvent in January-March this year.

This is a significant drop of 20% on figures from October-December 2009, however is still higher than the same period last year.

Mike Jervis, partner in the business recovery services practice at PWC said: “While UK businesses are still suffering from the effects of the global recession, many will be breathing a sigh of relief as more signs of a recovery become apparent.

Jervis added: “At PwC we are seeing a fall in the number of administrations as businesses are starting to look at other options before insolvency is used as a last resort. Financial restructuring, company voluntary arrangements and schemes of arrangement are now being used as businesses are now starting to realise that the sooner problems are identified, the quicker a solution can be found.”

The worst affected sectors continue to include Construction (674 companies), Manufacturing (620), Retail (456) and Real Estate (141), but there has been a marked improvement across all these sectors.  Compared to the same quarter of 2009, Construction has seen a decrease in insolvencies of 17%, 14% in Manufacturing, a big decrease of 33% in retail and a 16% decrease in Real Estate.

Commenting on the real estate figures, Barry Gilbertson, specialist real estate partner leading the business recovery property team at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, said: “Against the positive news of improving statistics, there remains the spectre of tenant failure which will continue to haunt landlord property companies (and their lending bankers) for many months to come yet. Every time a tenant fails, the landlord is hit with the triple whammy of having no rent, whilst at the same time having to pay the service charges and insurance on the vacant space, together with, after the short period of grace, paying the commercial rates on the empty property.”

London continues to have the highest number of insolvencies with 1,075 but compared to the same quarter in 2009, shows a marked improvement with a 19 per cent decrease. The South West, Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire were the only regions which showed an increase in insolvencies with South West insolvencies increasing by 10 per cent and Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire increasing by seven per cent compared to the same quarter in 2009.

Posted at 01:24PM Apr 19, 2010 by Marc Stenton in Insolvency  |  Comments[0]