Pagan Osborne owed £185,000 at collapse, administrators report

Legal firm Pagan Osborne owed a total of almost £185,000 to 53 creditors when it went into administration at the beginning of this month, the Herald reports.

A preliminary report by joint administrators Tom MacLennan and Iain Fraser states that the largest sums were owed to Registers of Scotland, at £34,000, and estate agency Mapeley Steps, almost £30,000. Real estate advisers CBRE were due £18,900, and two other property related businesses between £5,000 and £10,000.

The administrators predict that some money will be available to unsecured creditors, without indicating how much.

They attribute the collapse to a downturn in the property market, combined with an inability to repay subprime loans with "exorbitant interest rates" taken out in recent years after the firm struggled to pay off other debts.

Pagan Osborne's assets, goodwill and work in progress were acquired by Thorntons, which has begun a redundancy process likely to affect between 60 and 70 of Pagan Osborne's staff in its former offices in Cupar, St Andrews and Edinburgh. The former office in Anstruther is being rebranded as Thorntons.