Regent Group Ltd, where I was a non-executive director, and its trading subsidiary, Regent Partners International Ltd, went into administration on 23rd Dec 11. As a result, members of the management team have effectively bought the business from the administrators and, I understand, will continue to trade as Regent Partners International Ltd.
I’ve served on the boards of over 25 companies in as many years and this is the first time this has happened to a company of which I have been involved. It is an experience I would not wish on anyone.
I was invited to join the board in 2007 by my old friend Peter Rowell who was the founder of Regent some 25 years ago. Indeed, to me and many others, Peter was the ‘heart and soul’ of Regent. As many of you know, Peter contracted leukaemia and, after a long and courageous battle, died in May 2011. On top of that Regent was hit by a court judgement by an employee and several mandates that it had hoped to close failed to do so. It faced acute cashflow problems.
We did get another party interested in buying Regent but, in the end, it was not to be. We sought professional advice as to whether we could continue but that advice was that it would be in the best interests of the creditors to go into administration. Indeed, not to have done so could have led to serious consequences for the directors.
I must make clear that I now have no connection with the new management buyout team. I focussed my energies in the run up to administration on securing the best deal for the creditors – of which the Rowell estate is the largest.
There are good people still at Regent. It is in the interests of all parties, including the creditors, that they succeed in their new venture which I, for one, hope they will do.