Intu slashes head office roles as future of centres hangs in the balance

Retail Week can reveal that Intu has cut 46 roles from its group head offices in London, as well as a further 15 jobs at its Broadmarsh centre in Nottingham, after the owning property company entered compulsory liquidation. 

This follows the resignation of Intu’s former chief executive Matthew Roberts, who stood down two weeks ago having failed to renegotiate with lenders on debt repayments. 

A spokeswoman for administrator KPMG said that at the time the landlord fell into administration on July 3, there were approximately 370 people working at Intu’s head office. 

Intu is now in the process of a restructuring, being overseen by KPMG, that has been made more challenging by the complex ownership structure of its 17 shopping centres. 

The landlord owns centres such as Trafford Centre in Manchester, Lakeside in Essex and MetroCentre in Gateshead across a series of subsidiary property companies. 

Speculation has been rampant that Intu will be forced to sell off some of its prime sites to pay back its debts. One source close to the restructuring process said that if Intu were forced to sell centres, then the central business would likely go into liquidation. 

The landlord’s collapse into administration brought to an end a long-running saga that saw the group lurch from one crisis to the next. 

Stung by numerous retail company voluntary arrangements and administrations over the past few years, Intu was subsequently blindsided by the closure of its centres due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In May, Intu applied to lenders for a standstill on certain debts, the covenants on which it was in danger of breaching due to lost revenues from stores not trading.

To compound the landlord’s woes, it suffered a historically poor quarterly rent day earlier in June. Across the retail property industry, landlords collected less than 15% of all rent due – half as bad again as March rent day, where less than 40% of what was owed was paid.