MURRAY International Holdings, one of the biggest Scottish debtors of the former Bank of Scotland, is "doing the honourable thing" by the bank, Sir David Murray has said, revealing that his family interests have bought out MIH's steel business and are now bigger than MIH.
Sir David was commenting on MIH's latest accounts which show it made a £97 million pre-tax loss last year, £10m higher than in 2011, and exited its dominant metals business to focus on property and call centres.
MIH still owes Lloyds Banking Group £369m, after the injection of £117m by the bank last March and the generation of £164m from property disposals, reducing the debt from £636m in 2011 and a peak of over £900m.
The accounts show MIH sold its speciality plate and steels business 11 months ago for £14m in an unpublicised management buy-out, which was 60% backed by Sir David's family interests in an "arm's-length transaction".
MIH recorded a £12m loss on the sale.
Sir David said: "We have a family business, Murray Capital, a private investment, but we have a commitment to realise what we can ... we were into the bank for £900m and we had a legal and moral responsibility to return as much as we can."
He added: "The bank was also our partner, if you look at the group anything from 10% to 50% was joint ventures with the bank, so what we are trying to do is the honourable thing.
"We have not had a good couple of years, we are not trying to deny that, but there are probably 3000 to 4000 jobs relying on us and as a family we have got some pretty good investments – this [MIH] is a legacy business in many ways."
Sir David said of Murray Capital: "That [family] business will turn over about £200m next year and it made a small profit last year. What we are doing here is sticking to our original transformation plan."
MIH's continuing businesses turned over £170m last year. The sale of its last two steel businesses raised £4m, but the total proceeds from disposals of £18m were entirely offset by the loss on the buyout deal and the subsequent wind-up of the steel division.
The group slid from an operating profit of £11.4m in 2011 to a loss of £12.7m in 2012, while exceptionals still hit £66m, only £15m below the previous year which included the final £59m write-off in Rangers.
Sir David said most of the losses were due to a £38m value writedown on three major shopping centres, a £13m penalty for breaking hedges in order to repay debt, and the £12m loss on selling the steel business to himself.
Sir David dropped out of the Rich List two years ago, after having his wealth estimate cut from £720m to £110m in the previous two years. He writes in the accounts that the only economic bright spots have been prime London property and the energy sector.
The group has, since its year end, disposed of its energy business Premier Hytemp, in a £34m deal last December to a buyout led by former managing director Donald Wilson.
Response Handling, the call centre business, saw the 2011 operating profit of £28,212 slide to a loss of £484,626.
However, an exceptional non-contractual payment of £850,000 moved the division to a pre-tax profit of £364,392. The business lost its largest customer, Sky, but won a £20m contract with ScottishPower, creating more than 300 jobs.
On Rangers, Sir David said MIH continued to bankroll the legal costs of the "big tax case" and none of the £2m cost had been charged to Rangers.
Speaking on the possibility of the judgment in the case being reversed on appeal, he said: "We are confident... but it was important that we won the initial thing and were not found to be totally guilty."
On Craig Whyte's new attempt to prove ownership of the Rangers assets, Sir David said: "I very much still regret selling the club to Craig Whyte."
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