_{Picture from Print Week: Teresa-Anne Dunleavy} 

ICSM Credit: the 2018 accounts were a warning Taylor Bloxham were in trouble

The full scale of the collapse in December 2019 of the Leicestershire based Taylor Bloxham Group’s debts have been exposed by Jo Francis in Print Week.

The trade magazine’s senior industry reporter has charted the eye-watering figures at the centre of the insolvency that saw 171 workers lose their jobs and a string of creditors left high and dry.

ICSM Credit’s Ian Carrotte said the company had left a shocking mess for FRP Advisory to sort out. He said: "We had heard concerns from suppliers to Taylor Bloxham that things were not good and urged all members of ICSM to stop giving credit to the company last year. The 2018 accounts was an early warning and it was after that along with the appointment of the new CEO in Teresa-Anne Dunleavy last summer that things seemed to get worse.

“Sadly the scale of suspected problems with an ailing company are only discovered once the administrators go through the accounts. It’s always the small businesses and sole traders that take the biggest hit proportionally which is why so many join ICSM to get credit intelligence on their clients.”

Print Week had previously reported that Dunleavy was selected as his successor partly due to her specialism in working with companies undergoing significant structural and cultural change.

Jo Francis reported: “Taylor Bloxham Group was insolvent on a cashflow and balance sheet basis and had just £20,000 in the bank at the time of its administration, with creditors of the business owed more than £7m. The report into the firm’s collapse from administrators Ben Woolrych and John Lowe at FRP Advisory states that, despite an improvement in its financial performance during 2019, the group’s EBITDA of £885k was ‘insufficient to meet [its] debt obligations’.

“When Taylor Bloxham’s 2018 accounts were filed in July 2019 showing an £893k loss, suppliers to the firm started reducing their lines of credit. A winding-up petition filed in December was satisfied, but by that time another major creditor had supported the petition, resulting in a further squeeze on cash as suppliers demanded proforma payments.”

She reported that the firm owed a finance company more than £3m, trade creditors £4.4m, the 171 staff £1.87m, the taxman another half million and one local recruitment agency £290,000.

For the full report and article visit https://www.printweek.com/news/article/taylor-bloxham-creditors-count-cost-of-group-s-collapse

For details about ICSM Credit call 0844 854 1850 or visit the website www.icsmcredit.com or email Ian at Ian.carrotte@icsmcredit.com on how to subscribe and to join the UK’s credit intelligence network to avoid bad debts and late payers. Follow ICSM Credit on FaceBook, Twitter and YouTube and Ian Carrotte on LinkedIn.

To keep up to date subscribe to the FREE ICSM Credit Newsletter to hear all the latest insolvency news and to see who has gone out of business click on the orange panel on the top left of the home page of the website www.icsmcredit.com or send an email to Ian.carrotte@icsmcredit.com

For details for the work of the journalist Harry Mottram visit www.harrymottram.co.uk