By Scott Wright
MORE than 160 jobs have been saved after a Glasgow-based network infrastructure services provider was acquired in a pre-pack deal.
Mono Consultants went into administration on Friday after a period of poor trading was exacerbated by challenges arising from the pandemic. Its five sites across the UK were closed temporarily when the country moved into lockdown for the first time in March of last year.
Despite the turnaround efforts of a new management team, changes to working practices, allied to activity levels, were not sufficient to compensate for the difficulties created by the pandemic. The company faced a growing funding requirement with working capital needs projected to increase as activity levels recovered, the administrators said.
Blair Nimmo and Geoff Jacobs of Interpath Advisory, the former restructuring arm of KPMG, were appointed to implement an accelerated sale and fund-raising process. Immediately following their appointment, a deal was struck to sell the business and certain assets to Solutions 30 UK Services Limited, the UK branch of Solutions 30 SE. The French company provides last-mile solutions to the telecommunications, energy, IT, security and retail sectors.
All 165 people employed by Mono have transferred to the new owner, including staff as its headquarters in Glasgow and office in East Kilbride. Key management, the rights and interest to the clients contracts and certain assets have been retained.
Mr Nimmo, joint administrator and chief executive of Interpath Advisory, said: “Despite the turnaround that was in progress, this is unfortunately another company that has been adversely impacted as a result of Covid-19 exacerbating its funding challenges. We are pleased to see the business continue and wish Solutions 30 UK Services Limited and the workforce every success going forward.”
Geoff Jacobs, joint administrator and managing director of Interpath Advisory, said “We’re delighted to have been able to conclude this transaction and appreciate the significant efforts of the management team and the professional approach adopted by Solutions 30.
“Working together it is great to have safeguarded all 165 jobs, and allowed the continuity of business operations benefitting customers and suppliers alike.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here