The best read stories of 2018

January

The jobs of around 1,000 staff – including 100 contractors – previously employed by collapsed Carillion were saved after the Ministry of Justice announced it was establishing a new company to deliver facilities management services at prisons in England.

The new company, Gov Facility Services Ltd, was launched to take over services such as cleaning, reactive maintenance, landscaping and planned building repair work.

All the former Carillion staff transferred across to the new company with their terms and conditions of employment preserved.

February

Telford Plaza

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) completed one of the largest office deals in the Midlands by agreeing a new lease on 112,256 sq ft of Grade A space.

The letting comprised 13 floors across One and Two Telford Plaza, which collectively represent Telford’s prime business location.

Leases were taken on terms of nine to 10 years, off an asking rent of £12.50 per sq ft.

March

A decision by the Competition and Markets Authority to refer Countrywide Farmers’ sale of its 48 stores to Mole Valley proved to be the final straw as administrators were called in, putting 735 jobs at risk.

The Evesham-headquartered business sells farming, equestrian, harvesting and agricultural supplies.

The sale of its retail stores to Mole Valley, which was agreed in October 2017, had been held up by competition concerns. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched a detailed investigation into the proposed deal, believing that it could push up prices or lower quality in 45 areas.

April

The Wolverhampton headquarters of collapsed construction giant Carillion were put up for sale with an asking price of more than £3m.

Carillion moved 600 staff into the former Staffordshire Building Society headquarters, a six-storey property at 84 Salop Street, after completely refurbishing the building just three years ago.

May

TheBusinessDesk.com revealed that Amey was looking to end its £2.7bn highways maintenance contract with Birmingham City Council despite it having 17 years left to run.

We reported that the infrastructure support services group was paying penalties averaging £4m per month and its Spanish parent Ferrovial had to put a £208m provision into its accounts to cover additional costs.

The accounting change is a result of a Court of Appeal judgement earlier this year, which found in favour of the city council, and the council’s decision to charge full deductions of 100% of revenues per month.

Ernesto López Mozo, Ferrovial’s group chief financial officer, said Amey is looking to exit the 25-year deal early.

June

Primera Air announced it was to suspend its transatlantic flights to New York and Toronto from Birmingham Airport just a month after take-off.

Three weeks prior, TheBusinessDesk.com revealed that Primera Air had made its third cut to its transatlantic flights from Birmingham, despite the routes not having yet launched. At that time, when Primera had just cancelled the launch of its Stansted-Toronto route because it did not have enough aircraft, Birmingham Airport said it remained confident its services would be unaffected.

But then low-cost airline announced flights to New York would be suspended from June 21 “due the ongoing late delivery of its long-haul A321neo aircraft from Airbus”. It said its Toronto route, which was due to start on June 26, would not start.

Primera Air said it plans to reinstate transatlantic services next year once the aircraft is available.

July

It was revealed that almost all of the 356 Carillion redundancies made earlier in July were apprentices with the construction giant.

Around one-third of the remaining staff at Carillion were made redundant by the Official Receiver, more than six months after the construction giant entered liquidation.

Of the 356 redundancies, 341 were apprentices – a move described as an act of “crass stupidity” by the union Unite.

August

The Midland Metropolitan Hospital

A financial rescue deal was struck with the Government to fund the completion of the Midland Metropolitan Hospital.

The construction project had been on the critical list since the collapse of Carillion in January, leaving the new hospital “two thirds done” but deteriorating.

The Government agreed to provide funding for the remainder of the building work at Midland Metropolitan Hospital, which will see the new hospital built by 2022.

September

Mechanical and electrical contracting firm George Birchall Ltd entered administration after almost 40 years of trading.

The Stoke-on-Trent firm ceased operating due to poor trading conditions including the cancellation of a number of large orders.

Nearly all of its 141 staff were made redundant, with a few retained to assist the administrators.

126 staff were based in Newcastle-under-Lyme with the remaining 15 in Edinburgh.

Its larger facilities management and maintenance business, George Birchall Service, which employs 400 people, was unaffected and continues to trade.

October

The crisis at Patisserie Valerie is accelerated after its directors announced there was “no scope” for the business to continue trading in its current form without an “immediate” injection of capital.

The troubled cake retailer, which employs around 2,500 people, made its third update to the stock market in just 30 hours, saying it was “assessing all options available to the business to keep it trading”.

It followed the news that the Birmingham-based company revealed it was served with a winding-up petition from HMRC on its main trading subsidiary, Stonebeach.

The news was a further blow to the business, which suspended its shares after it found “significant and potentially fraudulent” accounting irregularities.

November

An energy supplier based in Birmingham ceased trading, the sixth small provider to go bust this year.

Extra Energy, headquartered in Edgbaston, is backed by Isreali businessman Moti Ben-Moshe and supplies gas and electricity to domestic and SME customers.

It launched in the UK in April 2014 and has around 108,000 domestic and 21,000 business customers.

Extra joined Future Energy, National Gas and Power, Iresa, Gen4U and Usio Energy, who all ceased trading this year, with regulators now moving to make licensing tougher for new entrants to the market. There has been a flurry of new entrants in recent years as the government and the energy regulator sought to increase competition in the energy sector.

Extra Energy blamed the government’s recent introduction of a price cap on energy bills for “making the market unviable”.

December

Legal & General announced it has drawn up plans to turn House of Fraser’s giant store in Birmingham into offices and a hotel.

Plans for the former Rackhams buildings, currently on a short term let to Sports Direct as owner of House of Fraser, include nine floors of Grade A offices and a new ‘boutique’ hotel on the corner of Cherry Street and Temple Row.

The refurbished buildings will deliver over 365,000 sq ft of office space, nearly 60,000 sq ft of retail and leisure facilities, a hotel of over 75,000 sq ft and more than 33,000 sq ft of restaurants, cafes and bars, together with communal space, a large atrium and external terraces.

The building has been under the ownership of Legal & General since 2014, which snapped it up for £71.4m.

Legal & General said it had been in discussions about a reformatted store with the former owners of House of Fraser since its acquisition and, after House of Fraser entered a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) in the summer, reached agreement with Sports Direct to allow the business to continue operating from the premises on a short term basis.

It said the proposals respond to “changing patterns in retailing and strong demand for Grade A office floorspace”.