The busy trend continued into November and it looks to be a very busy end to 2022! We are still seeing a continued flow of new instructions and plenty of assets in the £5-10k liquidation market. We are also still receiving instructions for valuations from companies and carried out a few evaluations. We are noticing more pre-pack sale scenarios as the markets pick up.
November has included a ladies fashion retailer, a commercial gardener, graphic designer, car repair garage, conservatory warm roof installer, property development company, hair salon, grocery shop, building company, engineers, an aggregates business and a physio company. These cases also included intellectual property and both freehold and leasehold property valuations. We are still seeing a lot of cases where the businesses were already in financial distress prior to the pandemic and have been kept afloat by government measurements and breathing space from creditors.
The hospitality and personal care sectors seem to be particularly struggling, not surprisingly given the cost of living crisis. As a result, the asset markets have been flooded with surplus commercial catering equipment, restaurant furniture and health and beauty equipment, which has had a serious impact on the values we are able to achieve.
We have also been kept busy dealing with the remaining assets at Lowaters Nursery, not helped with storm damage caused to the glasshouses, and wrapping up the post-deliverables on our intellectual property sale to a US corporation. We have also been assisting Silverwood Bakeware with the marketing and sale of the business and assets. There seems to have been an increase in the number of business sales that are saving reputations and jobs for staff, as opposed to closedown scenarios.
The coming weeks and months are certain to be interesting times for our sector, as businesses struggle to deal with the fallout from the pandemic and now the tumultuous UK economy and rising energy prices. The economy feels like a powder keg at the moment and we are expecting the rising interest rates and energy bills to result in further insolvencies as we approach the end of 2022 and going into 2023.
We had a fantastic time catching up with our clients at the R3 Annual Dinner. It was a very well attended event and we expect there were quite a few sore heads the next morning! It was lovely so have so many of our profession together again. We are enjoying catching up with our clients at an increase of networking events, paramount to strategic growth and partnerships.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact us if we can be of assistance with any matters. We are always happy to take a look at assets for you and let you know if they are worth dealing with. The impact of Covid-19, energy price increases and interest rate rises on many disposal processes have heightened the thresholds of what is cost effective to deal with and not.
We hope you all keep safe and well, and have a busy and prosperous rest of 2022!
Liv and the Team at Proudley Associates
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