From Billions to Bankruptcy

Vice Media is an American-Canadian broadcaster that was once worth £5 Billion. Now, they are close to filing bankruptcy and a group of lenders look to take over Vice Media group for £180 Million for a meagre 3.6% of it’s billions of pounds valuation, six years ago.

The Media giant faces closure of ‘Vice News Tonight’, which could result in massive redundancies to its workforce.

Failure to pay vendors

Earlier this year, Vice struggled to pay overdue bills to its vendors, and they required a £24 Million funding line from Fortress Investment Group in order to pay. In the same month, the CEO made an unexpected departure from Vice.

What does this mean for Credit Managers?

As we’ve heard time and time again, we are expected to see insolvency cases rise, as mentioned in our Rising Insolvencies Webinar earlier this year with Menzies, and the recent discussion that looked into some insolvency statistics that helped envision what's to come in 2023, cases like this could be a big warning sign.

From a practical perspective, it’s business as usual for Credit Managers, but we should take away the importance of identifying risk. It is often the largest businesses, with whom you may have been working for some time, who end up causing the biggest headaches. History has proven that no company is ever too big to fail.

Despite the comfort of ‘brand’, that is only one factor when it comes to extending credit.