Massive sites taken back by administrator

13-Apr-2009 - Last updated on 11-Mar-2017 at 22:19 GMT

Tup: one of the brands acquired by Innventive

Administrators are again trying to sell 19 Massive Pub Company leases a year after it sold the majority of the company to Innventive.

Administrator Grant Thornton is again trying to sell 19 Massive Pub Company leases a year after it sold the majority of the company to Innventive.

Innventive has breached the terms of a sale and management contract with Grant Thornton and the sites Innventive was running were taken back by the administrator.

A spokesman for Grant Thornton said: "We have taken back 19 pubs which we are running as a going concern. We wrote to creditors last Friday to tell them that Innventive had breached the terms of a sale and management contract. We are looking to sell them as quickly as possible and we have a number of people interested already."

The sites are located in London apart from one in Guildford and Grant Thornton is expected to advertise them for sale shortly.

Massive, which originally went into administration in January 2008, had a turnover of £20.2m in the 12 months to 30 April 2007 and ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amoritisation) of around £2m.

Of the 33 sites placed in administration, 14 sites were on Unique leases, one was a Punch pub, two were leased through Scottish & Newcastle Pub Enterprises and the rest were free-of-tie leases.

Four of the five L'auberge sites that were formerly part of Massive Pub Company were acquired in December 2008 by Rachid Noui, former operations manager for Massive, and Tina Hundt, formerly head of human resources at Massive.