City Motor Holdings has been placed in administration after attempts to find a buyer for the Basingstoke-based business failed. A total of 267 staff have lost their jobs.
Steve Absolom and Will Wright, from KPMG Restructuring, have been appointed joint administrators to the business that operates 13 new and approved used car dealerships in the Thames Valley region.
With sites in Newbury and Reading, CMH and its companies operate dealerships for a number of vehicle manufacturers, including Ford, Peugeot, Citroen, Suzuki, Kia, Honda, Seat and Skoda, in addition to operating the PX Centre in Basingstoke, which specialises in used car sales.
KPMG has retained 19 members of staff to help wind down operations.
It was revealed last week CMH was looking for a buyer to avoid going into administration due to "poor trading".
Absolom said: “While industry figures indicate that the number of new car registrations in the UK has remained consistently high over the last two years, the number of nearly-new and used cars also coming to market has put pressure on motor dealerships around the country.
“Against this backdrop and after a sustained period of poor trading, the directors of City Motors Holdings took the difficult decision to close its operations and call for the appointment of administrators.”
Wright said: “Over the coming days, our principal focus is on supporting employees with their redundancy claims and working with the vehicle manufacturers to effect an orderly closure of the business.”
“We are aware that there are a number of customers who will be affected by this administration.”
He said a process was already in place to contact many of them, anyone with immediate concerns should email citymotors@kpmg.co.uk.
The CMH companies in administration are City Motor Holdings Limited; Gowrings of Reading Limited; Gowrings of Newbury Limited; City Basingstoke Limited; Viking Basingstoke Limited; Houndmills Autoplaza Limited; Portfield Sports Cars Limited and Marshall Roebuck Limited
The dealerships affected by this administration include:
Ford Newbury
Peugeot Newbury
City Kia Newbury
Ford Basingstoke
City Suzuki Basingstoke
City Seat BasingstokeCity
Skoda Basingstoke
City Honda Basingstoke
Peugeot Basingstoke
Citroen Basingstoke
PX Centre Basingstoke
Ford Reading
Peugeot Reading
City Motor Holdings financial history 2012 - 2014
Jeremy has been a journalist for 30 years, 20 of which have been in business-to-business automotive. He was a writer and news editor on AM-sister brand Fleet News for three years before setting up the AM website. For the last five years he has been Bauer B2B’s head of digital helping to manage the digital assets of AM, together with Fleet News, Commercial Fleet, Rail and Smart Transport.
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