Breaking finance and business news, tax information, jobs and more for finance directors and senior finance professionals.

Economy

Erinaceous firms sold to banks

Written by Adrie van der Luijt

Tuesday, 22 April 2008

Tree of Erinaceous Group’s key businesses have been sold to a vehicle owned by the firm’s banks.

Joint administrators Jim Tucker and Myles Halley of KPMG said that following the sale of Erinaceous Insurance Services last week, the sale of the Residential Management division and the Property Maintenance division had now been completed.

These deals have helped to protect the jobs of around 1,800 employees.

Tucker said, “We have successfully managed to secure the future of these three strongly performing subsidiaries with little or no impact on employees or customers.”

The administrators have completed or are about to complete a further 15 separate sales across Erinaceous’ other divisions.

Within the Building Consultancy division seven separate businesses have been sold back to management to preserve value and save the majority of jobs.

A total of 322 employees have transferred to the purchasers as part of these transactions.

There are a small number of employees who have been retained to assist with the transition, however it has been necessary to make 155 employees redundant.

Erinaceous Consultancy Services Ireland Ltd, remains outside of any insolvency process and continues to operate as normal.

Although there have been 78 job losses in the Professional Services and Commercial Management divisions the majority of employees (283) have or are expected to be transferred to new owners following a number of further deals.

Around 200 employees from the Managed Services division, which provided cleaning, catering, security and ground maintenance to the private and public sector have been transferred to new employers.

A small number have also been retained to provide ongoing services to the other parts of the Group that are not in administration.

Erinaceous Group Plc had interests in two regional airports at Shoreham in West Sussex and Fairoaks in Surrey.

A sale was successfully concluded at Shoreham saving 49 jobs. The Fairoaks site was not subject to an insolvency procedure and has continued to operate as normal.

There have been 546 redundancies in total across parts of the group.

Tucker said that the administrators had worked “extremely hard” to complete deals that would protect as many employees from this as possible.

As a result more than 2,500 jobs have been saved through sales of various businesses and divisions or keeping key parts of the group outside of the administration process.

“This has enabled us to maximise the value of the assets under our control and avoid any significant disruption to customers and clients,” Tucker added.

He explained that his attention was now focussed on realising the remaining assets within the group.

These include interests in Erinaceous Ireland and Fairoaks Airport, neither of which is subject to insolvency proceedings, as well as various other assets.

Related articles