Hasta La Ideas

For months now we’ve been reporting on the struggles at one of the world’s largest architecture firms, RMJM. Failed bids and staff exits, lawsuits and possible jail time for its executives, and most recently, angry, damning letters being fired off by employees to everyone else in the company were becoming alarmingly par for the course when it came to talking about the once-celebrated firm. Meanwhile, RMJM would reply to these reports saying that, while yes, they were going through a difficult time, things weren’t as bad as they were sounding. That isn’t the case anymore, as the company released news that they’ve just taken an £8 million bail-out to help them recover. The awkward part of all of this is that money is coming from its CEO, Peter Morrison and his father, Sir Fraser Morrison, two people who had been trying to play down the troubles the company was suffering (though we suppose it’s a positive move, at the very least in a PR sense, that they’re sticking their own money in). Here’s a bit from the BBC about the new money:

The Morrison family is to inject £5m in share capital, with a further £3m as a loan.

This is with the agreement of RMJM’s bankers, and is scheduled to be complete by the end of this month, subject to shareholder support. The funding is not to be used to pay off bank debt, according to a spokesman.

The chief executive said he had been working through the detail of the funding for several months, and that it should leave them in robust shape.

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