Administrators reveal company was over £12m in debt

Anna Valley Studios 2

Anna Valley was over £12 million in debt when it entered administration, the administrator, Kroll, has revealed.

A large proportion of this was over £3 million to Natwest, as well as over £1.8 million to HMRC. In addition, the business owed over £1.5 million to employee creditors, and over £2.7 million to trade and expense creditors.

In addition, the adminstrators’ proposal outlines why the live events business found itself in trouble, with the slower than expected growth in the TV and film market caused by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes last year one of the reasons given. It also listed high overheads from recent expansion, a large amount of non-utlisied or obsolete equipment, high debt service costs, and spending in an attempt to create new pipelines that didn’t see success.

In an effort to deal with this situation, Anna Valley had made around 40 staff redundant, relocated its equipment to a single warehouse instead of the two it had been in, negotiated a Time-To-Pay agreement with HMRC, and repayment holidays with Natwest and a government loan it has received during the pandemic. It also held an auction of its uneeded equipment in December 2023, and tried to source additional asset finance.

The company was also marketed to be sold during the second half of 2023, with one offer of a pre-packaged administration sale received that was rejected as it was below the value of its assets. These efforts ended in November 2023.

In the first few months of 2024, Anna Valley began to have issues paying suppliers, Natwest, and HMRC, with administrators appointed shortly afterwards at the beginning of March. On the day of the appointment, 76 of its 130 remaining staff were made redundant, and as of the beginning of May, five staff remained - four in the warehouse and one in finance. Some ongoing projects were completed after the appointment of administrators.

The administrators expect the most likely exit from administration to be through dissolution, but are still open to other routes.