DTZ has been sold to UGL in a pre-pack administration that will return nothing to shareholders.
Quoted Australian services firm UGL has paid just £77.5m for debt-laden DTZ’s trading operations on a going-concern basis.
Administrators at Ernst & Young were appointed yesterday to DTZ Holdings and company’s shares ceased to trade on the UK stock exchange this morning.
Prior to the deal, DTZ had £106m of debt – net debt of around £60m once £42m of cash is taken into account – of which more than £25m was due to mature in the next year.
DTZ announced last month that, given its level of debt, the UGL bid attributed minimal value, if any, to its shares. It confirmed today that the transaction completed yesterday will realise no value for the ordinary shares of the holding company, which was majority owned by the French Mathy family.
None of DTZ’s trading subsidiaries are being placed into administration and they will continue to trade normally. No company in the DTZ group other than DTZ Holdings has entered any form of insolvency process.
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