Homebase owes unsecured creditors including AO and Halfords more than £650m

A document filed with Companies House revealed the amount of debt Homebase owes to creditors, which includes fellow retailers AO, Halfords and The Hut.

According to the document, unsecured non-preferential creditor claims reached £657m, which included £100m owed to trade creditors.

These count as debts owed by a company that are not secured by any specific asset and are not a repayment priority. They are unlikely to be repaid because of this.

Homebase’s directors revealed at the time of administration that £2.9m was owed to Close Brothers for till systems, £1.7m was owed to XPO for logistics, and it has racked up a £750,000 debt to AO for appliances supplied for its kitchen business.

The debt includes £524m owed to Ark Finco, owned by executive chair and founding partner of Hilco Paul McGowan.

Hilco owned Homebase until it went bust last year. Administrator Teneo said it was seeking legal advice on the security status of this debt.

JDM Retail chief executive and founder Jonathan De Mello said the fault lies with both sides.

“While it was indeed irresponsible of Homebase to take on so much debt given its extremely precarious financial position at the time, creditors do need to ensure that they do their due diligence before lending or providing products to any business, and the signs were there for all to see over the years that Homebase was in trouble and needed to urgently restructure,” he said.

In November, Homebase collapsed into administration with 70 of its stores, brand and intellectual property being sold to Chris Dawson’s CDS Superstores, owner of The Range and more recently Wilko, following a similar story.

The deal for Homebase was part of a pre-pack administration deal said to be worth around £30m.

Teneo said in the administration report that Homebase had “significant secured and unsecured creditor liabilities and a refinancing or legally binding compromise of its debts was, therefore, not achievable”.