Owners of Weston Park face financial problems

Owners of Weston Park nursing home, Four Seasons, is selling £60m of its care home assets in an attempt to stem its losses.
The care home provider’s property disposal strategy has been forced by the need to raise equity following a number of warnings that Four Seasons debt of £500m could lead to major funding issues.
The business is the largest independent UK operator in the sector – running 470 homes with more than 20,000 beds – but has been struggling as local authorities cut fees while staff costs continue to rise.
Increases in the minimum wage and the projected ‘living wage’ will have massive implications for operations such as Four Seasons as they are unable to pass these cost increases on.
Last month credit-rating agency Moody’s downgraded its own credit score for the business.
According to reports in both The Daily Mail and The Guardian, fourteen properties worth around £30m have been put up for sale.
Four Seasons has also put an investment portfolio of care homes, run by third-party operators, up for sale, with Knight Frank appointed as agents, for £30m.
Four Seasons has already sold twenty properties and says it is ploughing the proceeds into extensions of some of its current locations.
According to The Guardian, credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) has warned that Four Seasons, owned by Elli Investments – a company backed by Terra Firma run by Guy Hands and former Sainsbury’s boss Justin King – would run out of cash unless it undergoes a radical restructuring.
S&P said Four Seasons would have less than £20m remaining by the end of this year.
Four Seasons is paying more than £50m a year in interest on debts of £500m, and launched a financial review in August after its second quarter losses were £26m.