KPMG confirms scale of collapse – no return to creditors likely.
The first creditors meeting of the failed Excite Holidays took place this morning, with Administrator Morgan Kelly from KPMG revealing Excite’s complex structure, including a web of international companies in Singapore, Greece, the UK, Canada, USA, NZ, Thailand and Australia.
A statement from Excite’s Directors, Nicholas Stavropoulos and George Papaioannou, was read to the meeting, expressing “deep regret as to the impact to agents and passenger arrangements over the past few weeks”.
The statement confirmed that Excite’s trading performance had started to decline in 2018/19, with the downturn continuing into 2019/20 “as a result fo the market’s increased caution in dealing with non-ATAS channels following several high profile collapses in the travel industry”.
The Directors’ statement said Excite had been exploring options to strengthen its balance sheet to enable it to rejoin ATAS as soon as possible, however this did not occur quickly enough, while at the same time ongoing development expenses weighed heavily on its cost base.
The Administrator, Morgan Kelly, detailed a massive shortfall, with up to $35 million owed to creditors. That includes a $10.8 million debt to the National Australia Bank which is secured by the company’s Sydney office building, $1 million to employees, $800,000 to general suppliers, $6.5 million owed to various international companies within the group, and up to $16 million owed to travel agents and travel suppliers.
He said any return to unsecured creditors was extremely unlikely.
More details in tomorrow’s issue of Travel Daily.