Last Post 67 days, 12 hours Ago
Waterford Wedgwood collapses over debt pile
As well as its own-brand products, the company also produces goods for designers and celebrities including Versace, Terence Conran, and Gordon Ramsay
Robin Pagnamenta
Up to 1,900 UK jobs were under threat today after Waterford Wedgwood, the 250-year-old fine china and glassware maker, collapsed into receivership.
The company, whose brands include Royal Doulton, announced this morning that the Irish-listed company had been placed into receivership and that the bulk of its 10 UK subsidiaries would go into administration later today.
The collapse leaves Sir Anthony O'Reilly, the media tycoon and the company's non-executive chairman, facing millions of pounds worth of losses.
Waterford Wedgwood has been forced to appoint a receiver, which it named as David Carson from Deloitte, the accountancy firm, after it missed a January 2 deadline to meet loan repayments.
The company, which has net debts of €449 million, had been unable to raise €150 million of new equity it had sought in August.
It will also appoint administrators to the UK business later today, including Neville Kahn, the Deloitte partner charged with finding a buyer for Woolworths, which will see its remaining 200 stores close tomorrow after nearly 100 years of trading.
Waterford Wedgwood employs 1,900 people in the UK, chiefly at its manufacturing operation at Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent, at retail stores and other offices as well as 800 staff in Ireland.
The possible closure of one of Ireland's most well-known brands would be a major blow for the country that was one of the first in the European Union to officially fall into recession.
To Read the Whole Article Go To:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/indu
stry_sectors/consumer_goods/article5449313.ece
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JosephThePoet
Jan 5, 2009 | 11:07 AM |
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baicas
Jan 5, 2009 | 9:54 PM |
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"But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other." - John Stuart Mill
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