Crain's Manchester Business - 8-12 February, 2010 - (Page 1)

FOCUS CRAIN’S LIST Accountancy Firms Page 14 Page 11 Banking & Finance Deals market looks up in 2010 CRAIN’S MANCHESTER BUSINESS VOL. 3, ISSUE 6, FEBRUARY 8 - 12, 2010 CrainsManchesterBusiness.co.uk £2 What’s News ■ Garry Fielding, owner of Boltonbased conservatories business The Burnden Group, has bought the firm out of administration for the second time in 15 months, Crain’s has discovered. Fielding previously bought the company out of administration in October 2008, but Phil Duffy and Steve Muncaster from the Manchester office of insolvency practice MCR were appointed as administrators by its main lender, GE Commercial Finance, on January 27. Duffy said that trading the £10m-turnover firm in administration hadn’t been an option as products come with ten-year guarantees, which it would have been unable to honour. Marketing the firm to trade competitors could also have placed its main contract with retail chain B&Q in jeopardy. It therefore agreed a deal with Fielding for an undisclosed sum which protected all 300 jobs. ■ West Properties (UK) Ltd managed to reduce its losses in the year to March 31, 2009 but was forced to shed 14 jobs in the face of the stagnant property market. The developer, which is behind the Origin mixed-use scheme on the corner of Princess Street and Whitworth Street West, recorded a pre-tax loss of £74,000 compared to £1.1m the year before. Turnover dropped to £11.7m from £13.9m in 2008 and its net asset value remained fairly static at £1.3m, compared to £1.4m. The number of employees dropped to 19 from 33 at the company, and the wage bill reduced to £1m compared to £1.8m the previous year. Directors’ emoluments rose, however, to £1.17m from £877,000, and the highest paid director received a 50 per cent pay rise, taking home £353,000 compared to £242,000 in 2008. ■ Robin Strang has left his position as chief executive of the Public sector trainer hits buffers after £20m funding BY JAMES CHAPELARD A Manchester-based company, which ran improvement programmes for the public sector and received more than £20m from the National Health Service, has ceased trading with the loss of 50 jobs. The Improvement Foundation, a not-for-profit company, set up with a £4m NHS grant four years ago, ran seminars to help health trusts with issues such as lean methodology, tackling falls among the elderly and National Health Service pulls plug and forces The Improvement Foundation to cease trading combating killer bugs like MRSA and C-difficile. Last Monday, the company made 50 staff redundant and placed a message on its answerphone saying it had ceased trading. When Crain’s visited The Improvement Foundation’s third floor offices at 57 Spring Gardens, the door was answered by a man who described himself as “a consultant on the finance side”. He said: “The company has gone into receivership. It ceased trading because there was no income. It was reliant on the NHS and the NHS ceased to support it. It was a political thing.” The man said all the staff had lost their jobs and added that there had been an earlier round of redundancies last year. After going back inside to consult a director of the company, he re-emerged and said: “They’re not prepared to talk to you. They don’t want you to write anything.” Since that conversation, a spokesman for the Improvement Foundation has denied that the company is insolvent but declined to give further details. SEE NHS, PAGE 18 Latitude revs up for US gaming goldrush BY CRAIN’S STAFF REPORTER Manchester Sports and Leisure Trust, which runs Sportcity in East Manchester, Manchester Aquatics Centre and ten community and leisure centres in the city. The board is currently discussing the recruitment of a replacement and has appointed Rebecca Livesey, director of operations, as interim chief executive. ■ Manchester-based firm AMCA Ltd has gone into administration owing £13.8m to Lloyds TSB. The firm, which was based in Rusholme, recently re-appointed former director Nabeel Chowdery to work with administrators at Wilmslowbased Beesley and Company, as the company’s sole director, Ali Zolighadriha, was declared bankrupt. The company owns two properties in London, which are under the control of the bank’s appointed receivers, Allsop & IFE staff member Elie Gicht at work SKY’S THE LIMIT FOR IFE BY CRAIN’S STAFF REPORTER PHOTO: MARTIN O’NEILL/STUDIOFIVEFOUR.COM SEE WHAT’S NEWS, PAGE 2 Cheshire company has done a pioneering deal to make Sony’s PlayStation Portable games console available to airline passengers worldwide. The deal will spark explosive growth at IFE Services Ltd, according to chief executive Mark Hogg. Even though the company’s in-flight entertainment packages are seen by millions of travellers with 75 airlines and nearly all the major cruise operators, it has kept a low profile. IFE is based on the Pavilions Business Park, tucked away behind the Bentley garage in Knutsford, where 64 staff produce and process video content including feature films and short programmes, as well as safety videos and airline branding. Every day, tapes labelled for use on a particular aircraft are shipped to the airlines. One of the largest customers is supplied with 22,000 items of media per month. “We work in 74 languages and we’re responsible for providing airlines with hundreds of titles from all over the world in many different formats to run on thousands of aircraft,” said Hogg IFE posted turnover of £20.7m and a pre-tax profit SEE IFE, PAGE 18 Search engine optimisation firm Latitude is “revving up” for a potential bonanza if the US government decides to legalise online gambling. The Warrington-based company claims to be a market leader in the sector, where its clients include Bet365, Virgin Games and Victor Chandler. Chief executive Alex Hoye told Crain’s he attended the International Gaming Expo in London last month, where many exhibitors said they expected the US government to relax its hardline stance. This would require repeal of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, under which online gaming executives have been arrested and fines of hundreds of millions of dollars imposed. “The talk at the trade show was that it’s when, not if, it happens so we are revving up our engines for exactly that,” said Hoye, who comes from North Carolina. “We operate campaigns in America and we have lots of experience in the gaming sector so it would be very significant for us.” In a report last year, Goldman Sachs estimated that legalisation would create a US online poker and casino market worth up to $12bn. The bank’s assumption was based on a 45 per cent penetration of offline poker players and $400 annual gross gaming revenue per player. “We also estimate that the casino market SEE SEO, PAGE 18 Leading Page 3 GOOD NEWS AS LOCAL PUBLISHER BREAKS EVEN IN FIRST YEAR http://CrainsManchesterBusiness.co.uk

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crain's Manchester Business - 8-12 February, 2010

Crain's Manchester Business - 8-12 February, 2010