Very Group owners the Barclay family took out more than £100m of dividends from the business in the lead up to its bankers calling in long-overdue debts.
The family extracted £107.7m of the holding company for the online shopping retailer in 2022 as Lloyds Banking Group chased to receive payment for £1.2bn in unpaid loans the following year, The Telegraph reported.
The windfall consisted of three individual payments including £40m of dividends, £38.8m of “distributed” cash and a £38.9m payout from the family’s property investment arm Trenport.
The payout was revealed in the annual report for Shop Direct Holdings Limited (SDHL), the company that represents the Barclay family’s high street retail interests.
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The recently published document notes that the steep debts against the company mean there is “uncertainty over the future of the company” as well as the family’s wider empire.
Back in October Very Group drafted in bankers to put the business up for sale in the hopes that it would help to pay off the growing number of creditors.
However, the accounts questioned whether the sale estimated to value Very Group at around £2.5bn would raise enough to cover SDHL’s outstanding debts.
At the end of 2022, SDHL owes a total of nearly £2.6bn to private equity firm Carlyle, a handful of large banks, bondholders and other financial institutions.
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