Former Golden Turd winner Parabis has been broken up and sold off after being placed into a pre-pack administration, leaving staff fearing redundancy and accusing the directors of mismanagement.
Intended as a multi-disciplinary, one-stop-shop for personal injury claims, Parabis has been circling the drain for months. Consultants Alix Partners were brought in a year ago to restructure the group, but were unable to keep it afloat. After negotiations with Keoghs and Lyons Davidson were leaked to RollOnFriday, Alix confirmed that it is selling off the Parabis Group in a total of seven pre-pack deals. It is not clear which deal will include the Golden Turd, but Alix (now acting as administrator) expects the sales to raise £50 million, significantly less than the group's £70 million debt. Meanwhile private equity house Duke Street, which invested £21 million in Parabis in 2012, has written off its entire investment, and other creditors are also expected to lose out.
The rump of the group, including Plexus, has been sold to a group of individuals which includes Parabis Commercial Claims Director Tim Roberts. In a cheery press release, Roberts hailed “the dawn of an exciting new chapter", (ie not Chapter 11), and said that he was "delighted" to "have been able to secure the jobs of so many people".
However, some staff are unhappy that a chunk of the business has been bought by the same management team which oversaw its failure and earned the firm the Golden Turd in 2014, when staff blasted the "in-fighting and politics" and "appalling support and infrastructure". This week, insiders told RollOnFriday that the Parabis business was "seriously mismanaged", with senior roles being given to "inexperienced and inadequate" staff while billings forecasts were "hugely inflated". Staff say that many of them expect to be made redundant in the next three to six months, while others claim that in the rush to break up the group there have been "widespread" breaches of TUPE regulations.
There is a silver lining: as Plexus has survived, it remains eligible for the RollOnFriday survey. Could it win Firm of the Year 2016? No it cant
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Intended as a multi-disciplinary, one-stop-shop for personal injury claims, Parabis has been circling the drain for months. Consultants Alix Partners were brought in a year ago to restructure the group, but were unable to keep it afloat. After negotiations with Keoghs and Lyons Davidson were leaked to RollOnFriday, Alix confirmed that it is selling off the Parabis Group in a total of seven pre-pack deals. It is not clear which deal will include the Golden Turd, but Alix (now acting as administrator) expects the sales to raise £50 million, significantly less than the group's £70 million debt. Meanwhile private equity house Duke Street, which invested £21 million in Parabis in 2012, has written off its entire investment, and other creditors are also expected to lose out.
The rump of the group, including Plexus, has been sold to a group of individuals which includes Parabis Commercial Claims Director Tim Roberts. In a cheery press release, Roberts hailed “the dawn of an exciting new chapter", (ie not Chapter 11), and said that he was "delighted" to "have been able to secure the jobs of so many people".
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Plexus v.2 rising majestically from the flames, yesterday |
However, some staff are unhappy that a chunk of the business has been bought by the same management team which oversaw its failure and earned the firm the Golden Turd in 2014, when staff blasted the "in-fighting and politics" and "appalling support and infrastructure". This week, insiders told RollOnFriday that the Parabis business was "seriously mismanaged", with senior roles being given to "inexperienced and inadequate" staff while billings forecasts were "hugely inflated". Staff say that many of them expect to be made redundant in the next three to six months, while others claim that in the rush to break up the group there have been "widespread" breaches of TUPE regulations.
There is a silver lining: as Plexus has survived, it remains eligible for the RollOnFriday survey. Could it win Firm of the Year 2016? No it cant
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