Suppliers of bust Agent Provocateur to get back just 4p for every £1 owed

EMBATTLED lingerie chain Agent Provocateur is set to leave £28m in unpaid debts.

The chain, which went into administration earlier this year, will pay unsecured creditors – many thought to be small suppliers – just 4p for every pound that they are owed.

The biggest of them is thought to be private equity backers 3i. However, the group has 444 unsecured creditors in total, including a Moroccan garment manufacturer that is set to lose more than £500,000.

Vogue publisher Conde Nast, ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, Microsoft and The Ivy restaurant are also thought to be owed money.

A recent Companies House filing from the company’s administrators, Alix Partners, found that while unsecured creditors were owed £29.7m, they were likely to receive just £1.2m, to be shared between them.

Secured creditor Barclays will receive the full £27.4m it is owed while £40,000 will be paid to preferential creditors in relation to unpaid pension contributions owed to the company’s staff.

These sums will be paid by the purchaser of the failed business, Four Holdings.

Agent Provocateur was founded by Vivienne Westwood’s son Joseph Corre and his ex-wife Serena Rees in 1994 with the aim of ‘stimulating, enchanting and arousing’ wearers.

The couple opened the first boutique in London and oversaw its growth before selling the majority of their stake to 3i.

The brand gained notoriety in the 2000s, largely due to its sexually charged advertising, but fell into difficulty last y ear amid a fall in tourist spending, the costs of restructuring and the discovery of accounting irregularities. The downturn forced 3i, which bought it for £60m in 2007, to look for a seller last year after writing down the value of its 80pc stake in the company by £39m.

Four Holdings, the parent company of Four Marketing – a company backed by Sports Direct billionaire Mike Ashley – purchased the firm for £31m in March through a pre-pack administration arrangement.

The controversial administration involves buying the best assets of the company without taking on the liabilities.

At the time of the sale Corre attacked 3i for its ‘arrogance’, adding: ‘It is the worst possible outcome and something 3i will never be able to recover from.’