// Joules owed more than £100m when it collapsed last month
// During its administration, the retailer owed money to trade creditors, gift card holders and HMRC among others
Joules owed more than £100 million when it collapsed into administration last month.
The lifestyle retailer was nearly £114 million in the red when it called in administrators in November.
Joules was acquired by Next and founder Tom Joule, which meant almost 1,500 jobs were saved across stores and head office.
During its administration, the retailer owed money to trade creditors, gift card holders and HMRC among others, Business Insider reported.
Joules’ trade creditors include a software company, which is owed £345,000, a Deloitte branch in Hong Kong, owed £300,000, and a raft of property companies and landlords, which are owed hundreds of thousands of pounds.
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This was found in Joules’ “statement of affairs” which also revealed that it owed HMRC £3.86 million, while £1.3 million was owed to gift card holders.
Joules had assets of approximately £22 million available to pay preferential creditors when administrators were drafted in.
The takeover saw Next and Joule acquire the “majority of assets of Joules” through a newly formed company for £34 million at the start of December.
Next now owns 74% of the retailer, with the remaining 26% held by Joule.
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As ever a failure to use adequate retention of title provisions or to ensure that such provisions are properly incorporated into contracts means that suppliers have lost considerable sums with consequent knock on effects.