Funds from director’s family will let ad firm H&A exit examinership

CORK-BASED company H&A Advertising, one of the country’s largest ad agencies outside Dublin, will exit examinership shortly after securing new investment.

The scheme of arrangement revealed that unsecured creditors were owed €1.2m and will receive 3.5c in the euro.

The company provides a wide range of services in the area of marketing and communications, such as PR, design and internal communications.

The documents showed that the Revenue Commissioners were owed €310,000 while Enterprise Ireland was owed more than €200,000.

Other large creditors included a company called AD Design, which was owed €237,000, while Bank of Ireland was owed close to €150,000.

Close Brothers, an invoice discounting operation, was owed €143,000, while coffee company Jacobs Douwe Egberts was owed €270,000. Several radio stations were also owed small amounts of money. An examiner was appointed in October.

In early 2008, H&A Advertising took on increased debt when it acquired public relations firm O’Sullivans.

At the time of the deal, the agency said it had a portfolio of national and international clients, with the enlarged company boosting revenues of €5m.

Director Brian Healy told the Sunday Independent that funding had been secured and said that 96pc of creditors had voted in favour of the examinership proposals. He said that he hoped to reach the final stages of the process in the next week to 10 days.

Healy said that it has been a difficult decision to enter the process but that while revenues had stabilised, debt levels had remained an issue at the company.

“If we had carried on and done nothing, the outcome would have been a whole lot worse,” said Healy.

“It is a very difficult process which we entered into in order to save the 23 jobs in the company.”

“Creditors have been very supportive, as have staff and customers” he said.

Healy said the investment had been secured from his family. He said he was optimistic about the future of the company as it came close to exiting the process.

More than 2,000 jobs were saved last year through examinerships, the largest being when department chain Debenhams exited the process.