The administrator of Shuropody, the UK’s largest private provider of chiropody and podiatry, has called in CAPA to help fuel recoveries for the firm’s creditors.
CAPA has been instructed to audit data on business rates paid out at more than 40 properties at Shuropody, which entered administration in December 2018 after a tumultuous trading period during the past two years.
The firm’s financial difficulties started in 2016, when costs were disproportionately high to revenue and the business had to contend with loss-making stores.
Shuropody entered a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) in April 2017 but even after this was secured, the business suffered during a downturn in high-street retailing, particularly when the ‘beast from the east’ hit, and was impacted when a landlord terminated leases on a number of its profitable stores.
A second CVA was secured in June 2018, but the firm continued to suffer losses afterwards. Shuropody ultimately entered insolvency in December 2018, when Michael Chamberlain, founder of the business recovery firm Michael Chamberlain & Co, was appointed administrator.
Chamberlain, a renowned insolvency practitioner (IP) and winner of the Corporate Restructuring IP of the Year at the Turnaround, Restructuring and Insolvency Awards 2018, has since sold Shuropody out of administration to FCFM III Group Investments, enabling the business to continue to trade.
Chamberlain has also instructed CAPA to conduct the business rates audits at 43 Shuropody sites.
It means CAPA’s Audit team will inspect the rates data at the properties, to identify any errors, anomalies or overspend. Once these are discovered, CAPA will recover the sums on a no-win, no-fee basis for the creditors of Shuropody, in turn helping the company’s overall recovery.
