A housebuilding giant collapsed into administration owing a quarter of a billion pounds.
A report reveals for the first time that the Scottish owner of the UK company owed £258 million at the time of its administration.
The Stewart Milne Group, which was founded 50 years ago and placed into administration two years ago, owed the Bank of Scotland, which is owned by Lloyds Banking Group, around £115m, the Teneo Advisory report shows.
The administrators’ report also reveals over £141m owed to 1,361 unsecured creditors.
There was also £1.8m owed to HMRC, and £268,000 in 196 claims from employees.
The administrators said: “At the date of this report, the total amount distributed to Bank of Scotland from the companies is £10.45m.”
The company was founded by Stewart Milne, also a former chairman of Aberdeen Football Club, and went into administration with the loss of more than 200 jobs.
Described as “one of the UK's largest independent award-winning housebuilders”, it operated over 35 housing developments at one stage across the north east of Scotland, central Scotland and north west England.
Teneo Financial Advisory has extended its administration of the company to 2027 following approval from the Court of Session.
The administrators’ report showed that unsecured creditors' claims received to date totalled £40m, “which is significantly lower than anticipated when compared to the statement of affairs”.
Some money could be owed across the group’s own companies and some creditors may not have come forward for the expected £141m-plus in claims.
Creditors' chances
The report added that the variance is "primarily driven by intercompany creditor balances for other entities that are in administration, where claims have not been submitted by the companies".
It also said: “The lower number of claims received across the companies may also be attributed to a number of unsecured creditors not submitting claims in the administrations, given that we have stated in previous reports that it is unlikely that funds will become available to make a distribution to unsecured creditors."
Teneo also said: “We anticipate the companies will have net properties of nil therefore we do not expect that a dividend will be made available to unsecured creditors in any of the administrations, either via the prescribed part provisions or otherwise.”
The report added: “Based on present information, there is no prospect of distributions for unsecured creditors and, as such, we do not intend to undertake any work to agree any creditor claims received.”
The report said it had completed the sale of the companies’ eight partially completed development sites.
Market pressures including interest rate rises were also cited at the time as contributing factors.
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