The High Street claimed another victim on Thursday as Po Na Na, one of the UK's leading late night venue operators, called in the administrators after failing to find additional funding from its bankers.
A spokesman for the administrators, Grant Thornton, said it would be "business as usual" at the company's 40-plus outlets while a buyer for the operation was sought.
However, it is difficult to see who would be interested in the company in the current climate, especially as one of its big problems has been the difficulty it found trying to sell off under-performing and loss-making sites when the High Street was already in trouble.
For a year Po Na Na has been admitting that overall trading was being held back by a minority of under-performing sites, while insisting that the majority of sites were trading very well. In April 2002, the company admitted that it had to cut its new openings programme because it has been unable to sell enough of its under-performing sites to finance expansion.
In December it announced a pre-tax loss of £233,000 for the 26 weeks to 29 September on turnover down 7% to just under £16m, after group operating profit was cut 96% to £50,000 by the delay in the completion of its disposal programme and "the difficulty of non-core units trading while being openly marketed for disposal", which it said cost £887,000 on sales for those units of £1.2m.
Po Na Na runs some 30-plus of its eponymous bars from Swindon to Aberdeen, as well as around nine Fez Clubs and other outlets under the brand names Boom Bar, Bam Bu Da and Quids. It also owns the Hammersmith Palais.
Last week the company announced it was in emergency talks with its bankers about refinancing because of a temporary cashflow shortfall. At the time the company said that it would consider extending its disposals programme, as far as was practical. Po Na Na had 57 outlets at the beginning of 2002 and has sold 13 and closed one, leaving it with 43. On Tuesday it announced that it had asked for trading in its shares to be suspended, after they had fallen from 75p a year ago to 3.75p
Observers pointed to the acquisition of DP Group, the nightclub operator, and a stake in the Hammersmith Palais in 1999, as the events which took Po Na Na away from its core competency, running late-night bars.
A spokesman for the administrators, Grant Thornton, said it would be "business as usual" at the company's 40-plus outlets while a buyer for the operation was sought.
However, it is difficult to see who would be interested in the company in the current climate, especially as one of its big problems has been the difficulty it found trying to sell off under-performing and loss-making sites when the High Street was already in trouble.
For a year Po Na Na has been admitting that overall trading was being held back by a minority of under-performing sites, while insisting that the majority of sites were trading very well. In April 2002, the company admitted that it had to cut its new openings programme because it has been unable to sell enough of its under-performing sites to finance expansion.
In December it announced a pre-tax loss of £233,000 for the 26 weeks to 29 September on turnover down 7% to just under £16m, after group operating profit was cut 96% to £50,000 by the delay in the completion of its disposal programme and "the difficulty of non-core units trading while being openly marketed for disposal", which it said cost £887,000 on sales for those units of £1.2m.
Po Na Na runs some 30-plus of its eponymous bars from Swindon to Aberdeen, as well as around nine Fez Clubs and other outlets under the brand names Boom Bar, Bam Bu Da and Quids. It also owns the Hammersmith Palais.
Last week the company announced it was in emergency talks with its bankers about refinancing because of a temporary cashflow shortfall. At the time the company said that it would consider extending its disposals programme, as far as was practical. Po Na Na had 57 outlets at the beginning of 2002 and has sold 13 and closed one, leaving it with 43. On Tuesday it announced that it had asked for trading in its shares to be suspended, after they had fallen from 75p a year ago to 3.75p
Observers pointed to the acquisition of DP Group, the nightclub operator, and a stake in the Hammersmith Palais in 1999, as the events which took Po Na Na away from its core competency, running late-night bars.
