Property firm Blackpool Developments faces liquidation at creditors’ meeting

Blackpool Developments Ltd, a property firm part-owned by businessmen Clayton and Neil Love, faces liquidation at a creditors' meeting next week.

The company owned Blackpool Shopping Centre in Cork, which was sold for €116 million in 2014, to clear liabilities to one of its main creditors, the State's National Asset Management Agency (Nama).

Company filings show that Blackpool Developments Ltd has called a creditors' meeting for Friday, May 6th for the purpose of winding the business up. Accounts for Blackpool Developments for 2020 showed it owed lenders, including Deutsche Bank, €33.65 million at the end of that year.

The company did not comment when asked if its liabilities had changed since it filed those returns last year.

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Nama took over loans due to Irish lender Bank of Ireland, but it is understood the State agency is no longer a creditor of the business. It did not comment on Tuesday.

Investment properties

Blackpool Shopping Centre was the company’s main asset and source of income, but the 2020 accounts show that the company held some investment properties valued at €4.6 million.

The company is proposing that creditors appoint Aidan Heffernan of HK Corporate Recovery, Glasheen Road in Cork as liquidator. It is open to creditors to nominate their own candidate.

Blackpool Shopping Centre was sold as part of a group of properties, dubbed Project Acorn, in 2014 to US investor Varde Partners, in a transaction overseen by Nama.

The deal cleared €96 million of Blackpool Development’s debts, but left the company with significant outstanding liabilities that its remaining cash flow could not service.

Directors Clayton Love, Neil Love and Sarah Cronin acknowledged in their report for 2014 that the business faced likely liquidation.

Blackpool Developments Ltd is owned by Shipton Group, whose shareholders are Clayton and Neil Love and Ms Cronin.

The Love family are well-known in business. Along with Blackpool, they were also the original developers of the Wilton and Douglas shopping centres in Cork.