Paragon MD completes pre-pack rescue

Thirty jobs have been saved at St Helens-based Paragon Construction after the business was sold out of administration to Mason Lord, a company related to Paragon MD Paul Barrow, a former director of St Helens Chamber of Commerce.

Lindsey Cooper and Jeremy Woodside of RSM Restructuring Advisory LLP were appointed joint administrators of Paragon Construction Group Limited on 11 March.

Subsequent to the appointment, the company’s assets were sold to Mason Lord Limited in a pre-pack deal.

Of the 40 staff at Paragon, 10 were made redundant while 30 were retained by the new company.

The directors of Paragon Construction, based at Jackson Street in St Helens, sought advice from RSM Restructuring Advisory in January 2016 as a result of the company’s deteriorating financial position.

Lindsey Cooper, RSM Restructuring Advisory partner and one of the Joint Administrators said: “We are pleased that the sale of the company to Mason Lord has resulted in 30 jobs being secured. We considered a number of options including trading the business in Administration while a buyer was sought, but concluded that the practicalities and costs of doing so would be prohibitive. After marketing the business, we determined that a pre-packaged sale to Mason Lord Limited would be in the best interests of creditors.”

The transaction has also received the approval of the Pre Pack Pool, a peer group of insolvency practitioners.

Mason Lord was incorporated in October 2012 and is described at Companies House as a management consultancy. The company has two directos, Paragon’s Barrow and John Mason. In 2005, Mason’s Albany Assets was part of a failed bid to develop a 44-storey tower in Manchester’s Piccadilly, one of several grand plans for the area aborted in the financial crisis. Albany Assets redeveloped the Albany Building in Liverpool into flats before going into receivership in the recession and eventually being liquidated in 2011.

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Yep kick in the teeth for those who were made redundant. Made redundant on an unfair points system that was apparently fiddled to meet their own needs. Think Mr Barrow has is fingers in too many pies!!

By Anonymous

Most redundancy process points-based scoring systems are FDS (fiddled-to-suit). I’ve known people who were asked to score themselves during a redundancy process (this went on at Morgan Sindall in 2010).

Sometimes FDS is for the right reasons, sometimes for the not-so-right reasons. However, if and when the time comes that you’re getting the push, go quietly and diligently and move onto better things. Remember, companies that are going through a redundancy process have been operating a failed model with failed leadership. Move on from that crap.

By Jeff Suster

Creditors certainly wont be in their best interest. The whole system is a farce, they’ve known they were in trouble for months and simply avoided and ignored any chances to help said creditors. Says a lot for the integrity of the directors……

By Anon

How can this be called a rescue ! It should read, all staff and suppliers have been ripped off after a failed business has been placed into administration……meanwhile owner of said failed business buys back all assets a cut price leaving suppliers and the tax man to rot ! Its a disgrace this is allowed to happen, people starting up business’s time and time again, without having to take responsibility for previous failures !

By Concerned

Directors provided no communication to creditors for the past 2 months.

Extremely immoral situation led by a former Director of the St Helens Chamber of Commerce. Mr Barrow is a director in excess of 5 construction related businesses….. The only losers are the creditors who will generally many much more redundancies than Mr Barrow.

By Anonymous

Interesting to see how many clients will deal with this new “previously failed” business and what warranties and performance bonds this new company is able to provide.

By anon2

Yeah EC Harris did that FDS model too! some of the scores were incorrect but there was no come back for any of the parties who were being booted.

By Scott M

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