Tony Pidgley’s son puts property company Cadenza into liquidation
A property company run by Tony Pidgley Jr, the property entrepreneur and son of Berkeley Group founder Tony Pidgley, has gone into liquidation, it emerged last night.
Cadenza, which was set up by Mr Pidgley Jr in 2001 after his dramatic departure from the board of Berkeley amid family conflict, was put into voluntary liquidation four days ago.
The housebuilder ran into trouble after Heritable Bank, a UK subsidiary of Landsbanki, the Icelandic bank, which was supposed to provide funding for two Cadenza developments, went into receivership last year.
Mr Pidgley Jr told The Times: “We were in a very difficult situation where our bank was unable to fulfil its funding commitments. The bank’s administrators ripped up our agreements. I tried to refinance with a number of other banks, but you just can’t refinance. The real issue is that the bank is in administration and the failure of the bank is unprecedented.”
Valentine & Co have been appointed as liquidators of Cadenza.
The company attracted publicity in its early days after Mr Pidgley Jr used it to mount a £1 billion takeover bid for Berkeley Homes, which his father founded in 1976. Mr Pidgley Sr apparently found out about the buyout plan only after it was leaked to a newspaper. The former Barnardo’s baby, who was adopted at the age of four by a gypsy couple, has also seen off an attempted buyout by Guy Hands.
Cadenza, which specialised in urban regeneration and redeveloped sites, including the Bristol Brewery, hit problems with two London sites – one in Acton, the other near the Oval in Kennington. The company had sold all its other developments in the past 12 months. An AIM-listed property group will offer private investors the opportunity to swap their shares directly for holiday villas and plots of land, in an unusual move to off-load unwanted assets and simultaneously boost the value of its shares.
Dolphin Capital Investors will publish a catalogue next month that will include untouched plots of land, half-completed developments and some finished holiday homes, with investors able to swap their shares for half-price property assets.
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