Training provider Vocation closes one week after collapsing into voluntary administration

Training provider Vocation has ceased operations, less than one week after voluntary administrators were called in.

Ferrier Hodgson partners Peter Gothard, Jim Sarantinos and George Georges were appointed to manage the administration of Vocation on November 25 and immediately commenced an “urgent assessment of the business”.

In an update to the market yesterday evening, Ferrier Hodgson said it had no option but to cease the majority of Vocation’s operations effective immediately.

The closure has resulted in 150 employees losing their jobs.

The administrators said several factors contributed to the decision including “further customer contract terminations, the lack of available liquidity to fund operations and the lack of ongoing support from key stakeholders”.

“In addition to pursuing all available recoveries from the company’s assets and affairs, the voluntary administrators will be seeking expressions of interest for the group’s intellectual property and one of its operating businesses, Customer Service Institute of Australia,” Ferrier Hodgson said in the statement.

As previously reported by SmartCompany, the voluntary administration of Vocation came just over 12 months since the training provider was forced to forfeit almost $20 million in government funding.

The publicly listed company entered several trading halts during 2015 and is also subject to three class actions from shareholders, as a result of the rapid decline of its share price, from around $3.35 to its last trading price of 12 cents.

As many as 12,000 vocational education students across the country could be affected by the company’s collapse, with Vocation previously operating training colleges in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia. 

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