Ireland’s Waterford Wedgwood, purveyor of Martha Stewart-inspired China and Peter Rabbit crockery, as well as the ubiquitous crystal, is in receivership.
From a statement on the company’s website:
Waterford Wedgwood plc regrets to announce that it has this morning requested that its Stock Units be suspended from trading on the Irish Stock Exchange, with immediate effect, following the appointment of David Carson of Deloitte as Receiver to the Company and certain of its Irish subsidiaries and the expected appointment later today of Angus Martin, Neville Kahn, Nick Dargan and Dominic Wong of Deloitte LLP as Joint Administrators to Waterford Wedgwood UK plc and certain UK subsidiaries. Details of the affected companies will be set out in an announcement to be released today by the Receiver and Joint Administrators.
Perhaps not much of a surprise, given that the company’s managed to post five years of losses and the shares have been hovering around 0.001 euro cent since October. Still, Waterford’s benefitted from a lot of goodwill from its investors and lenders. It’s raised €400m over four years, according to Bloomberg, and its senior lenders allowed it to break financial covenants three times last month while it attempted to raise new money. A US private equity fund was reportedly in talks to take a controlling stake in the company for €600m, but that deal never, erm, crystallised.
Related links:
Waterford Wedgwood falls into administration – FT
Annie Lennox: Walking on broken glass – Youtube video
A spot of bother – FT Alphaville