The business rescue practitioners (BRPs) of embattled construction company Basil Read announced this month that they had appointed an independent sales adviser to appraise the company’s mining business and adjudicate on potential offers for the business.
This business is one of two the company has so far retained during its business rescue proceedings and which continues to be self-sustaining.
Meanwhile, Basil Read confirmed that it had terminated or completed 25 of 27 lossmaking contracts since it started implementing business rescue proceedings in October.
The company and its BRPs had managed to reduce its aggregate contingent liability to R575-million, down from the R1.1-billion announced in June.
Further, from seven contracts that had been cancelled, performance guarantees had been called in in three instances and the company is continuing negotiations to mitigate losses arising from the call of guarantees.
Basil Read has also moved to a new head office, which has reduced its operational costs, as well as its overhead costs, through retrenchments.
This status demonstrated significant progress in meeting a key objective of the business rescue plan: to facilitate the completion of lossmaking contracts and minimise the risk of the performance guarantees being called.