Case Study: Administration sale saves business and 26 jobs

Background

Ebor Concretes came into a period of difficulty in 2021 and recognising it needed support before it was too late, its director turned to Armstrong Watson’s Restructuring and Insolvency team.

Partners Rob Adamson and Mike Kienlen were engaged to assist with an accelerated sale of the business through an administration on 17 November 2021.

How we helped

Working in conjunction with BPI Asset Advisory, we were able to generate lots of interest in the business and had two bidders keen to proceed. Everything was heading in the right direction until the end of November when the Director unexpectedly passed away.

The Director was the sole shareholder and sole director and he hadn't left a will so there was no executor either. This meant that there was nobody at the company able to take control of the business whilst the sale completed.

The staff at the business needed some guidance, so we set them off with looking at what orders they had outstanding, what work they could complete and how much they needed to spend to complete that work, with the idea that the business would continue trading until we could complete the sale.

One of the benefits of insolvency processes is that they can be instigated by a creditor. In this instance, a creditor had already issued a statutory demand and so we contacted the creditor to see whether they would be willing to work with us to issue a petition for the Administration of the company (it's usually for the winding up and therefore closure of the company). We explained that we had some interested parties and that we were trying to rescue the business. The creditor agreed to help.

Results

On 7 December, Rob Adamson and Mike Kienlen were appointed Joint Administrators of Ebor Concretes Ltd by an Order of the Court on an emergency application.

After a challenging 10 days of trading the sale of Ebor Concretes to a third party was completed on 16 December 2021 with all 26 jobs saved in the process.