The financial black hole left by ISG’s demise has deepened to more than £1bn, Construction News can reveal.
Liquidators at Azets, who were appointed to manage 11 of ISG’s collapsed firms, have now received claims from unsecured creditors totalling £398.7m, their latest progress reports reveal.
This is a rise from the £203.3m identified in the statements of affairs published by Azets for the firms in November 2024.
Along with the £885m debt already identified by EY – the administrators for a key group of eight ISG companies – the new claims show ISG owed £1.2bn in total to its unsecured creditors when it went under.
Its collapse in September 2024 was the biggest in the construction sector since Carillion’s in 2018.
Azets and EY say they do not expect unsecured creditors to receive anything from ISG’s coffers.
The progress reports, released last week by Azets, are the first analysis documents it has filed on its work to liquidate the firms, more than a year after it was appointed to oversee the process.
The documents show that one ISG company, Interior Services Group (UK Holdings) Ltd, has received claims of £145.8m since Azets took over its affairs.
ISG Ltd – the UK parent firm – has also received claims worth £33.3m, though the firm did not record any debts in the initial statement of affairs.
Since ISG’s collapse, ISG Overseas Investments Ltd and ISG South have received eight claims of £53.4m, and three claims of £14.5m respectively (see full table below).
At the time of the collapse, ISG Overseas Investments recorded five intercompany creditors with total debts of £19.6m, and ISG South recorded one intercompany creditor with a debt of £1.2m.
Interior Services Group Ltd received claims of £49.1m, from three creditors, after it initially did not record any debts at all.
However, the liquidators said they had not received any creditor claims linked to one ISG firm, Totty Developments Ltd.
Azets also confirmed the ISG group owed HMRC £53.4m in unpaid taxes when it went under.
Spanish bank Santander, meanwhile, holds a bond facility that ISG Ltd entered into, worth €6.3m (£5.5m).
The bank has said claims from third parties related to the bond are expected to exceed €6.3m, leaving no funds for creditors.
Over the last year Azets has also identified two plots of land registered to ISG companies, one of which was owned by Totty Developments but registered under an old name.
It has accepted an offer for the site of £10,000, but the sale is yet to be concluded.
The liquidators also revealed they had found a potential land asset owned by a subsidiary of Interior Services Group Ltd, which they hope to sell.
According to ISG, it owed money to more than 2,700 firms. But the latest data suggests that could be a severe understatement.
In September, CN explored the impact of ISG’s collapse on firms both within and outside of the construction industry.
CN approached Azets for comment. EY declined to comment.
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Joshua Stein