The number of companies in 'financial distress' in the UK is on the rise. What's causing the problems and what exactly happens when a company goes into administration? Evan Davis and guests discuss.
Guests:
Julie Palmer, Insolvency practitioner, Begbies Traynor
Andy Scott, Chairman, REL Capital
Dr Rebecca Parry, Director, Centre for Business and Insolvency, Nottingham Trent University
Producer: Julie Ball
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0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
0:05.0 | Hello, welcome to the programme. |
0:07.0 | So many familiar businesses have found themselves in trouble this year. |
0:11.0 | High Street stores, restaurant chains, not to mention Thomas Cook, of course, one of the most |
0:16.4 | venerable brands around. |
0:18.5 | Now, when a company goes under, it is important to be very forgiving |
0:21.9 | in order to be able to rescue any viable pieces of the company to get them back on the road |
0:26.7 | in a sustainable way. Also, we want to encourage entrepreneurs to take risks, and that means |
0:32.8 | giving them a break when those risks fail. But obviously, you can't be too forgiving because that might |
0:39.2 | incentivise firms to take out debt irresponsibly. Well, we have legal insolvency arrangement to |
0:46.2 | find the right balance. And given these are being so well used at the moment, we thought we |
0:51.9 | should take a look at how they work and how effective they are. And as usual, I have three guests with me to guide us through this topic. Let us |
0:58.3 | meet them now. First up, we have an insolvency practitioner, the regional manager for the |
1:03.6 | South West, at a company called Begby's Trainer, Julie Palmer. Julie, just tell us about Begby's |
1:09.3 | trainer and what you do. Yeah, so I'm a licensed |
1:11.9 | insolvency practitioner. I'm an appointment taker for a sort of volume of appointments with the firm. |
1:16.7 | I manage the southwest region, which encompasses everything from Portsmouth to Swansea, including |
1:22.1 | Milton Keynes and Worcester on the northern side. And Begby's themselves, we are the largest |
1:26.9 | independent firm of insolvency |
1:28.7 | practitioners and corporate rescue advisors in the UK. So what would a typical case on your file |
1:35.1 | look like? There is no typical case as the answer to that. So at the lower end, we might |
1:39.6 | deal with a small solvent liquidation where we're returning money back to the shareholders. |
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