Bathla Group faces collapse unless emergency funding secured by week's end

The administrators of embattled property developer Bathla Group have said the company will fold by the end of the week unless they can secure additional funding to keep it afloat.

The insolvency advisory Teneo assumed control of Bathla’s operations on 25 August after the Sydney-based construction company went into voluntary administration under the weight of almost $3.6bn in debt.

Thousands of customers have been left in the lurch, many of whom have partially built homes.

Teneo’s senior managing director, Stephen Longley, on Monday said some of Bathla’s 350 head office staff had not been paid for eight weeks.

“There’s no cash here. We don’t have any cash to pay wages. We don’t have any cash to pay suppliers,” he said.

“So, unless that situation can be resolved, we won’t have any option other than to close the business.”

Some staff had taken a “leap of faith” to keep working unpaid until the end of the week, in the hopes that an emergency financial backer could be found, Longley said.

He flagged potential redundancies should Bathla survive the week, with Teneo doing a review of its 350 staff “to work out which ones are mission critical”.

In a notice announcing its decision to go into administration, Bathla said Teneo’s immediate priority was to “stabilise” its operations and work with lenders to support employees and the continued delivery of projects.

Teneo said it was not in a position to refund deposits that hopeful homebuyers had paid to Bathla, which according to its website has 20,000 apartments and 7,000 dwellings in the pipeline.

Longley said the administrators would prioritise Bathla’s 45 projects that were already under construction, which were expected to result in between 2,000 and 2,500 new homes.

Teneo was working to secure the backing of other lenders after the New South Wales government rejected its request for a financial lifeline.

Longley said Teneo would be able to provide an update on Bathla’s future after a meeting with the potential creditors on Friday.

“The lenders’ response has been good,” he said.

“It’s just something that’s come quickly and we need a lot of people to come together to put a solution together. I’m hopeful that in the next couple of days we’ll get there.”