Online used car retailer Cazoo appoints administrators

Online car retailer Cazoo has appointed administrators following months of financial uncertainty and it abandoning its signature home delivery service in favour of a classifieds website. 

Teneo will oversee the sale of the Cazoo Group's three businesses: Cazoo Holdings, Cazoo Properties and Cazoo.

The third of those is the group’s marketplace operating arm and is still in operation under Teneo’s guidance. 

Teneo will retain the firm’s 208 staff during the administration process. This includes 124 London-based marketplace workers and 25 employees at its Manchester and Northampton customer collection centres.

Some 59 head-office and customer-service employees are also being kept on to “assist with the orderly wind-down of the business”. 

Matt Mawhinney, joint administrator at Teneo, said the marketplace business is ”performing ahead of expectations”, with “a number of interested parties”, and the remaining customer collection centres are attracting similar interest.

After the three firms are sold, Cazoo Group, which is currently listed on the New York Stock Exchange, will be put into voluntary liquidation by its directors, Teneo said.

Administration has been looming over Cazoo, which was founded in 2018 with a promise of “simple and seamless” car buying, for months.

From its inception until June last year, the business burned through £1.4 billion of investors’ cash while selling 130,000 vehicles.

As such, it restructured to a marketplace focus, with the loss of 728 jobs. It sold its entire vehicle inventory, its wholesale busines and a number of repair centres and customer collection centres to rivals Constellation Group and G3 Remarketing.

These sales also involved 51 employees transferring to new employers.

Mawhinney said: “Following Cazoo’s decision to pivot to a marketplace model, the group has been winding down its legacy operations and sold a substantial number of its businesses and assets.

“These sales have generated additional value for creditors, preserved a significant number of jobs and ensured that leases have been transferred to new operators to mitigate losses to landlords.”