Intu collapses into administration

KPMG has been appointed as administrator to intu after the shopping centre owner failed to come to an agreement over its debt. Shares in the business have been suspended on both the London Stock Exchange and Johannesburg Stock Exchange. All of the REIT’s shopping centres are unaffected and will continue to trade. A range of asset managers are being lined up to take over the running of the centres, including British Land, Sovereign Centros, Ellandi and Global Mutual. Intu directly employs around 2,373 people, including 370 at its head office in London. Intu said: “Discussions have been ongoing with financial stakeholders to achieve standstill-based agreements. However, insufficient alignment and agreement in relation to the terms of such standstill-based agreements has been achieved with financial stakeholders. As such, application is being made for the administrators to be appointed to intu and several other key central entities in the intu group.” Jim Tucker, partner at KPMG and joint administrator, said: “intu owns many of the UK’s biggest and best-known shopping centres. The challenges affecting UK retail are well known and have been exacerbated by the impact of COVID-19 and the resulting lockdown. “As today’s administration makes clear, those challenges have fed through to owners of retail property, even to owners of high-quality shopping centres such as intu’s.” The shopping centre owner has been in discussions with its financial stakeholders since early this year after failing to raise £1.5bn to help shore up its finances. In March, it saw some £2bn wiped off the value of its portfolio and was forced to include a material uncertainty clause in its results. Over the past 12 months, intu has seen its share price tumble by almost 98% from 77.64p on 25 June 2019 to just 1.75p today.   To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette