Which company was this? The bailout must have been done on the QT.
It was well advertised and had to have the EU approval. It was British Energy the company owned all of the big nuclear power stations. They bailed out non productive US and Canadian nuclear power stations. The director was sacked. I had to postpone my early retirement by a month.
I was lucky, I sold my 7000 shares before the announcement was made.
My company was brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the idiotic decisions of its Managing Director and his cohorts (who all got nice retirement/redundancy payments of course), so that it had to go into a 'merger', ie takeover with an asset stripping giant that had already wiped out, sorry, merged with, two other competitors in a similar way during the previous decade.
We were told everything was 'safe in their hands', but working practices were changed to the extent that I was forced to do something for which I had no experience or training, and was threatened with disciplinary action and dismissal when it all went wrong and I made a massive mistake because I was effectively having to do an entirely different job, totally untrained.
In the end, the new company issued a load of closure and redundancy notices anyway, but most of the people who lost their jobs were old school loyalists from the company that had been taken over, some with over 20 years experience.
I still feel very bitter over the whole thing, I worked for the original company for nearly 15 years and was very happy, but like many others had nothing but bad to say about the company that took over. >:(>:(>:(>:(
Sounds familiar.
I worked for an Edinburgh based Life Assurance company in the 80s. They were part of National Nederlanden, a huge multinational financial services company (now ING Bank). When NN decided to sell off it's non banking assets and concentrate on it's core banking facilities they sold us to Britannia Life, at that time owned by the Britannia Building Society. BL had really only just come into being, formed by BBS taking over a couple of insurance companies just a year or two before. They hadn't even properly completed the merger of those two companies when we were taken over. BL were based in Glasgow, but we were assured by their management that the Edinburgh Office would remain open and fully staffed for at least two years. That was, I believe, part of the deal too. It didn't take long for things to fall apart though.
First of all they were trying to integrate now three once separate companies, with different working practises, computer systems etc. at the same time. They needed to cut costs as the costs of integration was spiralling, so they made a big round of redundancies. The first anyone knew about it was when those being made redundant came to work to find letters on their desks telling them they no longer had a job and to leave immediately, they would paid to the end of the month in lieu of notice. No warnings, and right up until then the management were still telling everyone things were going well and their jobs were safe.
Those of us who survived thought, again because that's what we were being told, that everything was now fine again and that the Edinburgh office would stay open for the full agreed two years. But then it was announced the Edinburgh office would close 18 months after the takeover. A few months later that dropped to 12 months after the takeover, which by then was less than 6 months away.
The building was sold to RBS, which many of us found out about in the press rather than from the management.
Just before final closure there was another round of redundancies, this time better handled though as those being made redundant at least knew it was coming this time.
Again though I survived, and was transferred to the Glasgow head office. To be fair to them somewhat they did offer all staff who transferred a deal. We could work for their Glasgow office for a full 12 months to see if we enjoyed it there, but if we found another job within that 12 months we could leave the company with full redundancy intact.
In the end I found a new job with another company back in Edinburgh just before the 12 months deadline, and walked away with a redundancy payment of 5 grand and a 5 grand pay rise, so for me personally, it wasn't all bad. But that still doesn't excuse the very bad handling of the first round of redundancies, and them reneging on their agreement to keep the Edinburgh office open for the length of time promised.
Britannia Life themselves didn't last too much longer though, the mishandling of takeovers were one of the main things that brought down the Britannia Building Society and BL ended up becoming Alba Life for a short while, before ending up as a defunct company closed to new business and part of a large pension company who buy up closed schemes.
I had only been in my first proper graduate job for just over a year when we closed down. I got into work at 8:30 on Monday morning but was told to clear my desk and go home. It's a odd feeling being back at home at 9am on a Monday not knowing what you are going to do with your life - and it was still 2 hours before the pub opened.
I was devastated. Just when I thought that my career had got going, I'd moved to a different part of the country, got a car and a nice flat, I was suddenly jobless without any redundancy money and no savings.
Fortunately I found new job within 3 months and I have been here for 15 years.
The funny things is that I would probably welcome redundancy now. With a long service I'd get a decent payout and I with savings I could afford to have a long career break before doing something completely different.
As Student I got a job as a assistant photographer, great and good money. I arrived for my first day at work to find my boss battling with bailiffs, afterwards he offered me a cup of tea (they left the kettle) and told me due to his financial problems he had to make a cutback which turned out to be me.
I can laugh now...:)
Yes. The office premises I worked at had an area designated as a gym, complete with steam room, multigym, freeweights, a sunbed etc. The MD knew I liked to use the gym after work, so came to me and said "If you can get the stuff out the gym, into a van or something, you can have them before the receivers get here"
Yes I have worked for a company that went bust. We all knew it was going to happen, the only surprise was it went on for so long, limping from disaster to another.
The signs were there for years. I could see what was happening and where we ultimately ended.
Lack of customers
No plan to improve situation
No real understanding of the causes of our problems
No motivation to realise we had a problem
No leadership.
Even though I worked for the company, we deserved to fail because we had no one in the positions who had a clue how to turn our decline around. Sad for the people who lost their jobs, but what's the point of a company limping along.
They were pushing vouchers just before christmas, that put a doubt in my mind, then last week, the staff turned up to our local one and were told the store was shutting in a weeks time.
The end is nigh IMO.
Comments
It was well advertised and had to have the EU approval. It was British Energy the company owned all of the big nuclear power stations. They bailed out non productive US and Canadian nuclear power stations. The director was sacked. I had to postpone my early retirement by a month.
I was lucky, I sold my 7000 shares before the announcement was made.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2519517.stm
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2002/sep/06/energy.nuclearindustry
Sounds familiar.
I worked for an Edinburgh based Life Assurance company in the 80s. They were part of National Nederlanden, a huge multinational financial services company (now ING Bank). When NN decided to sell off it's non banking assets and concentrate on it's core banking facilities they sold us to Britannia Life, at that time owned by the Britannia Building Society. BL had really only just come into being, formed by BBS taking over a couple of insurance companies just a year or two before. They hadn't even properly completed the merger of those two companies when we were taken over. BL were based in Glasgow, but we were assured by their management that the Edinburgh Office would remain open and fully staffed for at least two years. That was, I believe, part of the deal too. It didn't take long for things to fall apart though.
First of all they were trying to integrate now three once separate companies, with different working practises, computer systems etc. at the same time. They needed to cut costs as the costs of integration was spiralling, so they made a big round of redundancies. The first anyone knew about it was when those being made redundant came to work to find letters on their desks telling them they no longer had a job and to leave immediately, they would paid to the end of the month in lieu of notice. No warnings, and right up until then the management were still telling everyone things were going well and their jobs were safe.
Those of us who survived thought, again because that's what we were being told, that everything was now fine again and that the Edinburgh office would stay open for the full agreed two years. But then it was announced the Edinburgh office would close 18 months after the takeover. A few months later that dropped to 12 months after the takeover, which by then was less than 6 months away.
The building was sold to RBS, which many of us found out about in the press rather than from the management.
Just before final closure there was another round of redundancies, this time better handled though as those being made redundant at least knew it was coming this time.
Again though I survived, and was transferred to the Glasgow head office. To be fair to them somewhat they did offer all staff who transferred a deal. We could work for their Glasgow office for a full 12 months to see if we enjoyed it there, but if we found another job within that 12 months we could leave the company with full redundancy intact.
In the end I found a new job with another company back in Edinburgh just before the 12 months deadline, and walked away with a redundancy payment of 5 grand and a 5 grand pay rise, so for me personally, it wasn't all bad. But that still doesn't excuse the very bad handling of the first round of redundancies, and them reneging on their agreement to keep the Edinburgh office open for the length of time promised.
Britannia Life themselves didn't last too much longer though, the mishandling of takeovers were one of the main things that brought down the Britannia Building Society and BL ended up becoming Alba Life for a short while, before ending up as a defunct company closed to new business and part of a large pension company who buy up closed schemes.
I was devastated. Just when I thought that my career had got going, I'd moved to a different part of the country, got a car and a nice flat, I was suddenly jobless without any redundancy money and no savings.
Fortunately I found new job within 3 months and I have been here for 15 years.
The funny things is that I would probably welcome redundancy now. With a long service I'd get a decent payout and I with savings I could afford to have a long career break before doing something completely different.
Serves them right for not having anyone with banking qualification on the board!
I just took retirement and was happy to let them get on with it.
I can laugh now...:)
The signs were there for years. I could see what was happening and where we ultimately ended.
Lack of customers
No plan to improve situation
No real understanding of the causes of our problems
No motivation to realise we had a problem
No leadership.
Even though I worked for the company, we deserved to fail because we had no one in the positions who had a clue how to turn our decline around. Sad for the people who lost their jobs, but what's the point of a company limping along.
The end is nigh IMO.