Eleanor Temple, chair of insolvency and restructuring trade body R3 in Yorkshire and a barrister at Kings Chambers in Leeds, responds to today’s publication of the February 2022 corporate and individual insolvency statistics for England and Wales: “The monthly fall in corporate insolvencies is being driven by a reduction in all types of corporate insolvency process, with the exception of administrations, whose numbers increased to a 15 month high. “This increase suggests that there are a number of insolvent businesses which have some prospect for rescue, given this is one of the main statutory purposes of the administration process. Wherever possible the insolvency profession will work to secure the rescue of businesses in administration to help ensure better outcomes for the business, its staff and its creditors. “However, despite the month-on month-decline, the figures released today show corporate insolvency numbers were higher than this time last year and the year before – and that levels of corporate insolvency have remained at pre-pandemic levels. “Sadly, the ending of the peak of the pandemic and the lifting of the final set of restrictions hasn’t led to the shot in the arm the business community had hoped for. Although the economy grew in January and firms benefited from restrictions ending in February, it took time for footfall to increase – and will take a while before anything resembling normality returns. “Consumer spending has declined and consumer confidence is low as people worry about the economy and their own financial position, with inflation now a real problem for firms and individuals alike. This situation is unlikely to improve any time soon given the impact the war in Ukraine will have on energy costs. “In addition to this, the restrictions on using winding-up petitions are coming to an end later this month – something which could see an increase in creditors turning to legal action to recover unpaid debts. “Now is the time for directors to be alert to the signs of financial distress and to take action if they show themselves. We know conversations about a business’ financial position are some of the hardest to have, but speaking up about your concerns at an early stage typically leads to a better outcome than if you’d waited until the problem worsened.” Personal insolvency “The increase in personal insolvencies is being driven by a rise in Debt Relief Orders and Individual Voluntary Arrangements. This suggests that more people are looking for help with resolving their financial issues and to come to an arrangement to manage their debts. “It’s clear that the economic issues of the last two years are starting to take their toll on people’s financial health. In addition to the issues created by the pandemic, rising fuel and energy costs are a big concern for many and wages are failing to keep pace with inflation. As a result, there are a lot of people who are worried about their financial prospects in the months ahead. “Our message to anyone in this position is simple: seek advice as soon as possible. The earlier you do, the more potential options you have to resolve your situation, and the more time you have to take a decision about how you move forward.”

Harrogate-headquartered managed IT service provider, Redcentric, has acquired 7 Elements Limited, a provider of security testing, incident response management and bespoke security consultancy services, in a deal worth up to £2.4m. 7 Elements works closely with customers to assess security threats, identify weaknesses and deliver tailored solutions to protect customers. The acquisition enhances the Redcentric service portfolio with additional capability within the security market. 7 Elements has annualised revenues of c.£1m and EBITDA of c.£0.3m. While 7 Elements is now a key part of the Redcentric group of companies, it will continue to operate as a standalone business and will continue to be led by its former owner, David Stubley, who established the business in 2010. Under the terms of the agreement, £1.95m initial consideration was paid in cash on completion, with a further earn out payable in cash based on the future performance of the business over the next thirteen months. The maximum potential consideration payable is £2.4m. Peter Brotherton, Chief Executive Officer, Redcentric, said: “I am delighted to welcome 7 Elements into the Redcentric family. The addition of its services to Redcentric’s existing DDOS, SIEM, managed WAF and information security consultancy services means we are now able to offer a complete portfolio of security services to our customers. I’m very much looking forward to working with David and the 7 Elements team to help ensure our customers are secure.”

The Sheffield-based company behind a platform for the creation of synthetic training data for AI vision systems has raised $3.7m (£2.8m) through a new investment round. Mindtech Global has completed a strategic investment round led by Appen, a specialist in data for the AI lifecycle. The latest investment round, including participation from Appen and existing Mindtech investors, follows a $3.25m funding round in July 2021 and will be used to support the company’s rapid growth. The July 2021 investment round for Mindtech Global was led by NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance, which is managed by Mercia and is part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF), with Deeptech Labs and In-Q-Tel participating. In addition to the new investment, Appen and Mindtech have formed a commercial partnership to provide a range of real and synthetic images and associated data and metadata annotation services to the market. Mindtech’s Chameleon platform is expected to be complementary to Appen’s existing data and annotation services. Chameleon’s ‘no-code’ platform is designed for the creation and automated annotation of synthetic data to train human-to-human and human-to-world AI applications. It is designed to help computers understand and predict human interactions in applications ranging across retail, smart home, healthcare and smart city. Mark Brayan, Chief Executive at Appen, said: “Synthetic data is an invaluable resource in the training of AI models and when combined with real-world data can enable outstanding results. We’re excited to partner with Mindtech as their automated end-to-end end synthetic data platform produces the right synthetic data for our customers, faster than competing solutions.” Steve Harris, Chief Executive at Mindtech, said: “We’re excited about this strategic partnership with Appen – it’s going to enable more customers to rapidly train their AI systems on scalable synthetic data while complementing Appen’s existing products in real-world data collection, management and annotation. “By working in partnership, we’ll further accelerate the development of AI systems that better understand how humans interact with each other and the world around them.”