Yahoo Finance Insolvencies rise helps Leonard Curtis back into the black
The rise in company insolvencies across the UK helped Leonard Curtis back into the black during its latest financial year, new documents have revealed.
The restructuring and recovery group made a pre-tax profit of £806,550 for the 12 months to April 30, 2023, having made a loss of £276,569 in the prior year.
Leonard Curtis also posted a turnover of £29.2m for the year, up from £17m.
The Manchester-headquartered group has offices across the North West, Scotland, Yorkshire, North East, West Midlands, South East, South West, London as well as Guernsey and Jersey.
A statement signed off by the board said: “The restructuring and insolvency division has seen an increase in revenue from £14m to £15m; a full year of Leonard Curtis South Coast Limited has contributed to £2.8m of the growth.
“The remaining increase has been through organic growth and the UK restructuring market coming back following the withdrawal of pandemic-related government support, UK inflation and rising energy costs.
“The results from the legal services division were strong for the period and reflected a buoyant M&A market for the corporate team and internal referrals from our restructuring and insolvency division.”
The statement also added that the “division has seen an uplift in revenue from £1.7m to £2.5m; this is through organic growth and a key hire towards the end of the year under review”.
“The results in funding were above budget and expected after a full year due to the return of SMEs requiring funding as they come out of the pandemic and access to government-backed funding was phased out,” it continued.
The results come after The Office for National Statistics revealed that the number of company insolvencies has soared to its highest level since 1993, as voluntary liquidations reached the most since records began in 1960.
Throughout 2023, there were over 25,000 company insolvencies, with every category of insolvency rising compared to the year before.
However, the record is in absolute terms: as a proportion of registered companies, the rate is 53.7 per 10,000 firms, compared to a peak of 94.8 in the 2008 global financial crisis.
On its future, Leonard Curtis added: “The group continues to seek to grow its market share by way of geographical expansion and by reviewing the potential growth within the offshore market and by acquisitions – within all three pillars of the business, the group has access to significant levels of capital as a result of the transaction on August 23, 2021.
“The group anticipates meeting its strategic target of £50m revenues by 2025 based on the mixture of organic growth, key hires and acquisitions.”
