The Harvey Nichols store in Dundrum Town Centre is insolvent, with interim provisional joint liquidators appointed by the High Court on Thursday.
Judge Siobhan Stack was told the Co Dublin entity, part of the Harvey Nichols UK-wide group, was unable to pay its debts and was insolvent.
The Dundrum store employs 33 people. The judge heard it had been unable to recover from poor trading since the pandemic and was no longer being financially supported by its UK parent group.
John Lavelle, for the company, told the court the group and the Dublin store had been loss-making for a number of years.
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He said five specific creditors and the Department of Social Protection would immediately be informed of the company’s collapse.
Lavelle said the petition to wind up the company had been presented by its secretary and sole director, Julia Goddard, with an address at Cleveland Square, London. He said John Boland and Nicholas O’Dwyer of Grant Thornton had agreed to act as joint liquidators.
Goddard stated in written evidence that the annual rent for the Harvey Nichols Dundrum store was €1,059,410. The company had net liabilities of €19,382,000 in 2021, which had risen to €28.2 million by the end of the 2026 financial year.
She stated that there was no buyer for the company and the board had decided it was in its best interests to enter a winding-up process.
Goddard said if no buyer could be found for the Dundrum company, the joint liquidators would be best placed to implement an orderly cessation of trading and secure the assets of the company.
The judge appointed Boland and O’Dwyer as joint liquidators and granted them necessary powers to conduct their task. The proceedings were returned until September 7th.
Earlier, it was announced that Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group has bought the Harvey Nichols department store chain through what is known as a prepack administration process in the UK.
Frasers will acquire six stores, including Harvey Nichols’ flagship store in Knightsbridge, London. The Harvey Nichols group has more than 1,000 employees. Additional reporting by the Financial Times.
