Fairline - any news?

petem said:
Yep, having worked for the company for many years he is 'beyond sad' but remains hopeful that the business can be resurrected by someone. I imagine the rest of the senior management team share his feelings.

I have no idea what the owner and solitary formal Director (Mr Ahmed) thinks.
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Good luck to them all. If the story about pension contributions is true I expect some immediate fireworks.
 
Sadly I doubt that anything other than Fairline as a portfolio brand of another manufacturer can be achieved in the future. Even then, in a market that has significant issues of over capacity, over supply, brand proliferation, short product life-cycles and plenty of competition from good quality used boats, why would you spend money buying another brand for only marginal incremental volume?

Excellent products are the result of a compelling ethos shared by the people who design and build them and also the people that buy them. Where I come from, slapping a logo on something that doesn't have the heritage or authenticity of the original counts as badge-engineering and carries the appropriate price tag.

Many of the comments on this thread capture some of the reasons for Fairline's decline, but inevitably they don't tell the whole story. The seeds of Fairline's decline seem to go back very many years. The more recent owners have rightly come in for plenty of criticism on here, but even BeCap didn't buy a bed of roses.

It seems to me that one of the biggest issues was the progressive destruction of trust throughout the buyer-dealer-manufacturer-employee-supplier chain. It really doesn't matter how efficient your manufacturing and supply chain processes can become. If customers don't trust you enough to transfer their money to you, you won't have a business.

Combine that lack of trust with an unwillingness (or inability - take your pick) to make the necessary investments in keeping the product portfolio fresh and you are on a fast-track to nowhere in this industry.
 
REALLY !! -- can't BC use Google like the rest of us ? Oh well, it was just for public consumption :-

From the MBY report :-
Better Capital told the Daily Mail last night: “As part of the transaction, the buyer made a commitment to provide additional funding to Fairline which was essential for it to function as a going concern.
“Despite repeated assurances, this funding has not materialised. This is a sad outcome for staff – we had hoped that a sale to such an experienced and apparently well-funded buyer would secure the future of the business.”
 
Albertshorefoot said:
As a member of Staff at Fairline that helped build your Sq78's jfm, I cannot tell you how it felt today to stand in front of the Administrators hearing the news that we are unlikely to be paid on Christmas Eve and that we are extremely likely to lose our jobs. There were some 200 staff still within the business today to hear the news despite the layoffs that have happened, and I can tell you that even as we waited for the administrators to come down and tell us what was going on we all wanted to believe that this wasn't the end. All I really want to say is that I have had the pleasure of working with some fantastic guys who are immensely proud of the products we made. They treated the boats as their own until they left the factory and it has been a privilege to work alongside some of the best craftsmen in the industry. I hope this isn't the end of Fairline because as a company the spirit of Fairline gets right under your skin, and even when you really don't want it to be any more you cannot help the fact that it is part of you. Sad, tired and quite emotional I wish all of the guys all the very best for the future because they deserve it. After all their loyalty, hard work, determination, commitment and tireless attention to detail it looks like we have been let down for the last time. Damn that hurts.
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A very sad day.
 
rudder said:
On well it won't come as a surprise to read on the"Alliance News" on thestock exchange website that it was our good old friends Better Capital that called in the administrators...mmm....Happy Christmas girls and boys from Mr Moulton..
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Hmmmm, perhaps BC chose today (following yesterday's Commons vote) as a good day to bury bad news.
 
Albertshorefoot said:
As a member of Staff at Fairline that helped build your Sq78's jfm, I cannot tell you how it felt today to stand in front of the Administrators hearing the news that we are unlikely to be paid on Christmas Eve and that we are extremely likely to lose our jobs. There were some 200 staff still within the business today to hear the news despite the layoffs that have happened, and I can tell you that even as we waited for the administrators to come down and tell us what was going on we all wanted to believe that this wasn't the end. All I really want to say is that I have had the pleasure of working with some fantastic guys who are immensely proud of the products we made. They treated the boats as their own until they left the factory and it has been a privilege to work alongside some of the best craftsmen in the industry. I hope this isn't the end of Fairline because as a company the spirit of Fairline gets right under your skin, and even when you really don't want it to be any more you cannot help the fact that it is part of you. Sad, tired and quite emotional I wish all of the guys all the very best for the future because they deserve it. After all their loyalty, hard work, determination, commitment and tireless attention to detail it looks like we have been let down for the last time. Damn that hurts.
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Hi Albert. Yes this is very sad. I just read your comments about the privilege of working with the best guys (+gals), the build team treating the in-build boats as their own, and the spirit of the company getting under your skin. It made me think. Let me say as outsider who had the pleasure of visiting many times, to sit with Derek in the board room, to meet Sam Newington (once!), but mostly to be in the factory with the build team sketching ideas with pencil and paper, that all those qualities of Fairline that you talk about were massively visible to others. That is to the great credit of your team - the team spirit that you talk about was so strong that even an outsider could pick it up very quickly. It was a real privilege and much fun to be a visitor to your place and (for a few hours at a time) be a part of your team.

Remember also how much people appreciate your work Albert: it's one thing to buy a boat, but I and a couple of guys I know have each bought TWO s78s. Yep, having sailed one for a couple of years we all realised it was so good that we didn't move on to something else, we bought ANOTHER. That doesn't happen often, and it shows how good your work is.

You wouldn't believe the number of emails I've had in last 24 hrs from people all around the world with a Fairline connection saying how sad/heartbroken they are

So it has been a privilege for me being a customer over the years and being involved. I'm proud to have one of your boats (the best one you ever built in the whole 52 years, in my opinion). I wish you all the very best and hope that some kind of smaller Fairline can carry on after the administration.
 
EME said:
This is a sad outcome for staff – we had hoped that a sale to such an experienced and apparently well-funded buyer would secure the future of the business.”
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I really do think that BC is taking the royal piss with that statement. It was apparent to anyone who cared to look even on a cursory basis that WB was not in a position to provide funding for a new teapot let alone a global manufacturing business

Could anyone explain why it appears to have been BC who have called in the adminstrators when the company was apparently sold to WB in September and it was WB that called in the so called turnaround specialists and applied for a CVA?
 
Deleted User said:
I really do think that BC is taking the royal piss with that statement. It was apparent to anyone who cared to look even on a cursory basis that WB was not in a position to provide funding for a new teapot let alone a global manufacturing business

Could anyone explain why it appears to have been BC who have called in the adminstrators when the company was apparently sold to WB in September and it was WB that called in the so called turnaround specialists and applied for a CVA?
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Maybe BC expected to get some money (albeit deferred) when they sold. When they could see this wasn't likely to happen they wanted to recover as much of what they were owed as possible?
 
benjenbav said:
When they could see this wasn't likely to happen they wanted to recover as much of what they were owed as possible?
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Or just have some basis for justifying a tax-deductible provision in their year-end account, rather than a (possibly taxable) deferred income?
Just guessing, but these folks are more sophisticated than Nigerian scammers, you know... :ambivalence:
 
MapisM said:
Or just have some basis for justifying a tax-deductible provision in their year-end account, rather than a (possibly taxable) deferred income?
Just guessing, but these folks are more sophisticated than Nigerian scammers, you know... :ambivalence:
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:D

I was thinking similar if it's true that they were the ones who called in the Administrators. Can't help but think they saw WB coming and seemed a scapegoat to muddy the waters/shoulder the blame? Perhaps the true scale of required cash injection wasn't realised by WB? Lack of proper due diligence in the face of an apparent 'good deal' maybe?
 
MapisM said:
Or just have some basis for justifying a tax-deductible provision in their year-end account, rather than a (possibly taxable) deferred income?
Just guessing, but these folks are more sophisticated than Nigerian scammers, you know... :ambivalence:
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No that's way off the mark. Its an offshore investment partnership and then a cellular fund company listed on stock exchange. Standard structure and no tax avoidance happening
 
petem said:
As an unsecured creditor what are they likely to get back from the £2m debt? Sod all would be my guess.
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Hi Pete. Why do you think unsecured?

My thinking is that there is no reason for them to call in the administrators unless they have some form of security over debt -- so there must be a higher 'debt ranking' there somewhere/somehow.

.... and that would really hack me off
 
jfm said:
No that's way off the mark.
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Ok, but then it's even worse, because my guess gave BC the benefit of the doubt that they weren't really hoping to still get something out of FL ruins.
If they do, the FL sale between the cat and the fox (feel free to pick who's BC and who's WB) gets my vote as the transaction much closer to a farce in M&A history... :ambivalence:
 
jfm said:
No that's way off the mark. Its an offshore investment partnership and then a cellular fund company listed on stock exchange. Standard structure and no tax avoidance happening
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Be fair, I think the Nigerian scammers comment was on the money !
Hopefully someone will force the receiver to look in some hidden corners for any wrong doing.
 
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