Archial was rescued from the brink of total collapse thanks to a lightning-quick deal, with up to 20 potential buyers being whittled down to one in just three days.

The firm announced on Tuesday that it had been bought for an undisclosed sum by privately owned Canadian business Ingenium, a move which Chris Littlemore, who has been retained as Archial chief executive, claimed would result in a “bright future” for the company.

The remarkable level of interest shown in Archial means that, in less than a week, it has gone from the peril of being in administration over millions of pounds-worth of debt to being part of a larger international and multi-disciplinary firm with all 340 UK staff retained on existing contracts.

But the deal thrashed out by administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers will not be such good news for creditors; and shareholders – who received an upbeat trading update from Archial in May – will not receive a penny.

Partner at PwC and joint administrator, David Chubb, revealed he had been handling “15-20” companies bidding to buy Archial last Thursday with the parties involved working through Sunday night to close the deal with Ingenium, the latest in a string of Canadian firms to buy up British practices.

“We had terrific interest,” he told BD. “It was a really good range of industry players. On Friday evening we had a shortlist of five. We later brought that down to two bidders which we looked at through the weekend.

“Circumstances dictated the speed but I would say this couldn’t have gone much better. We had immense challenges last week keeping the business alive in administration.”

It also emerged this week that the founder of Archial’s predecessor SMC Group sold his shares at the beginning of the year.

Stewart McColl had a 3.5% stake in Archial, but sold all 8,399,689 shares on January 28. At the time, the share price was 7 pence, giving his sale a value of £587,978.23.

At its peak in 2007, Archial shares traded at £1.89 but had fallen to 1.5 pence when they were suspended earlier this month.

Prior to going into administration, Archial was involved in at least four legal claims against debtors over unpaid fees, including one against construction and oil tycoon Ian Suttie.

The one part of Archial not acquired by Ingenium is the Sparch Asia arm, which employs around 60 people.

Current Archial projects include much of Birmingham’s BSF work; London’s 251-room Puddle Dock hotel; living quarters and leisure facilities for construction workers for a new Total E&P UK Limited gas processing plant in the Shetland Islands, the £46.5 million Plymouth Life Centre and Alsop Sparch’s newly completed Michael Faraday nursery and primary school in south London.

Source: BDonline