Bad debt in Middle East pushes Make into £900k loss

Turnover almost halved at architect Make in 2009 and the practice lost nearly £1m because of bad debt in the Middle East.

Revenue fell from £18.5m to £9.8m while pre-tax profit tumbled from £521,000 to a £890,000 loss in a troubled week for UK architects.

Ken Shuttleworth, founder of Make, said that the practice would have made a profit were it not for bad debt. “We have had one Middle Eastern client who hasn’t paid us,” he said.
Barry Cooke, finance director, declined to name the scheme, but said it was a “big commercial job in the Middle East, that was spread over a number of places”. He added that the fees had been written off.

UK revenue was particularly badly hit, falling from £16.5m to just £6.6m in 2009, which Cooke attributed to a lack of work across the private sector. “It was across all the private sector - it was very down last year,” he said.

But he said turnover was about 50% higher this year than in 2009, largely thanks togrowth in mainland China.

Directors’ pay remained steady, with £1.36m split between the four directors, including £643,963 (2008: £673,980) to the highest paid director, presumed to be Shuttleworth. Staff numbers dropped from 138 to 109 in 2009, but have risen to 120 this year.

The news comes after last week’s announcement that Archial had been bought by Canadian engineering and architecture group Ingenium after going into administration over unpaid taxes.

Aukett Fitzroy Robinson also announced that it was “consulting with some staff regarding a small number of redundancies”.

However, there was better news at Populous, formerly HOK Sport, which increased its turnover by £1.1m to £16.7m in 2009, and made a £1.3m profit after hiring 50 architects in the year, taking the total to 125.

Separately, Charles Young, the former Europe director of Aukett, who left Aedas as business development director about a month ago, is understood to be in talks about joining Woods Bagot.