York Group fails as bank talks collapse
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• Trailer builder York Group has become one of the biggest victims to date of the transport recession.
The Corby-based group, which employs 800 in the UK, called in the receiver last week after talks to arrange a refinancing deal collapsed.
Receiver Cork Gully has placed adverts in The Financial Times to sell York firms, including York Trailer, Neville Charrold, Abel Demountables and three of its Continental subsidiaries.
Cork Gully's Chris Barlow says he plans to sell as much of the business as possible as a going concern. Staffing levels are being reviewed — any redundancies will be made "solely for financial reasons".
York's managing director Jim Davies, who led a management buyout in 1988, says the company had missed its last monthly interest payment of £600,000 to the consortium of eight banks and nine investment institutions which provided the £61m to purchase the group from Bunzl.
"We could no longer be assured of access to funds to pay our suppliers and staff so we had no choice but to call in the receivers," he says. He blames the group's failure on the recession: "The moral is, if you're going to do a leveraged buyout, make sure the market is going north."
Davies, whose firm bought Piacenza of Italy in 1988, Titan of France in 1989 and Italian petrol tanker manufacturer OMT this year, had planned to pay off the firm's debts with a Stock Market flotation.