The administrators who saved Clintons in a rescue deal have appointed CAPA to audit hundreds of stores across the retailer.
CAPA will be conducting a full accounts payable audit, as well as a full property audit, on 383 properties occupied by Clintons, after KPMG completed a rescue package for the greeting card chain.
AG Retail Cards Ltd, the company that traded as Clintons, had been suffering cash flow pressures due to a maelstrom of issues impacting the sector, such as business rates, fragile consumer confidence and uncertainty around the taxation of online retail businesses.
Eventually, Will Wright and Steve Absolom from KPMG’s restructuring practice were appointed joint administrators to AG Retail Cards on December 4 2019.
Immediately following their appointment, KPMG sold the brand and assets of the business to Esquire Retail Ltd. The deal safeguarded 2,500 jobs and enabled more than 330 stores to continue trading.
KPMG has now instructed CAPA to undertake the audits, meaning CAPA’s Audit team will use bespoke software to undertake a forensic audit of all invoices owed to Clintons across the entire chain. The auditors will inspect all accounts payable data to uncover any issues, anomalies or errors, before recovering any overpayments for the administrators.
As the instruction includes a full property audit, CAPA will also interrogate all costs associated with the sites Clintons occupied and traded from.
This will include inspections of utility costs, service charge fees and rates paid out at all of the 383 locations. CAPA will uncover any errors in this information, before recovering any further overpaid sums for KPMG.
