The collapse of Jamie Oliver’s Italian restaurant chain has left creditors facing losses estimated to be in the region of £83 million, according to a report in the Times newspaper.
According to the joint administrators’ report for Jamie’s Italian, the largest creditor to bear the brunt is HSBC, which had provided £39.4 million to the company in the form of secured debt against the chain’s 23 restaurants across the country.
Oliver founded Jamie’s Italian in 2008 with his ex-mentor Gennaro Contaldo with the company quickly growing to 40 sites nationwide.
However, in 2017, six branches were closed and by May this year the business had incurred up £71.5million worth of debt with Oliver revealing the company had ‘simply run out of cash’.
It is understood that Oliver personally lost around £25m. In an interview last August with the Financial Times, Oliver stated that he put £7.5 million of his own savings into the business to save it from ruin when it was hours from bankruptcy.
Commenting of the collapse of his chain, Oliver said: “We’re still trying to work it out, but I think that the senior management we had in place were trying to manage what they would call the perfect storm: rents, rates, the high street declining, food costs, Brexit, increase in the minimum wage.
Former employees of the chain announced last week that they are planning to pursue pay-outs in an employment tribunal over the nature of their redundancies.
Representing the employees, law firm SDM Legal will argue that the employees are each entitled to a protective award of up to 90 days gross pay because a 30-day consultation period was not carried out prior to their redundancy.
