New documents suggest Joules was almost £114 million in the red when it called in administrators back in November.
They show the retailer – which has since been bought out by a partnership made up of founder Tom Joule and high street giant Next – owed tens of millions of pounds when it went into administration on November 16, including £37.7 million to its trade creditors.
Those trade creditors, the report says, include a software company owed £345,000, a branch of business advisors Deloitte in Hong Kong owed £300,000, and various property companies and landlords which are owed hundreds of thousands of pounds between them.
An official “statement of affairs”, signed off by Tom Joule and Joules chief executive Jonathon Brown and just published on Companies House, says Joules Ltd also owed HMRC £3.86 million and almost £1.3 million to people holding Joules giftcards.
The paperwork suggests the Leicestershire business had just over £22 million of assets available to pay preferential creditors when administrators at Interpath Advisory were called in. The business has annual sales of more than £200 million.
The clothes and homewares retailer was forced to appoint Interpath – and suspend its shares – in November after failing to find backing following months of disappointing sales.
In a previous comment a spokeswoman for Interpath said: “Per insolvency legislation, shareholders will be the last class of creditor to receive a distribution and they will only receive a distribution if and after all other creditors have been paid in full.”
At the start of December Mr Joule – who launched Joules in Market Harborough in 1989 – formed a joint venture with Next to buy back the business and its assets.
The £34 million deal kept around 100 stores open and protected almost 1,500 jobs.
Next has taken 74 per cent of the equity with the remaining 26 per cent owned by Mr Joule.
Next – which is also based in Leicestershire – has also acquired Joules’ £20 million Harborough head office, which opened in 2021, for £7 million cash.
However, 133 jobs have been lost with the closure of 19 Joules stores.
