ISG administrators recover £46m — trade creditors still get nothing

Administrators have recovered nearly £46m from the wreckage of ISG — but trade creditors still won't see a penny. The latest report from EY-Parthenon shows unsecured creditors facing losses on estimated claims of £885m, two years after the contractor's failure.

To put that gap in perspective: recoveries to date cover roughly five pence of every pound claimed. Eight ISG businesses entered administration on 20 September 2024.

Where has the money come from?

Administrators recovered nearly £7m in the six months to 19 September 2026 as they chased outstanding debts, retentions and legal settlements. The biggest single payment was a £5m instalment, completing a £10m settlement of an engineering division claim.

The £45.5m total breaks down by division:

• Construction: £12.1m
• Engineering: £17.8m
• Fit out: £7.7m
• Retail, including logistics and distribution: £7.9m

Another £1.6m arrived on 22 September, after an adjudication win for ISG Retail. That payment falls outside the reporting period and sits on top of the £45.5m figure.

Who gets paid first?

HMRC is expected to recover part of its £91m preferential claim, though the tax authority will also face a shortfall. Preferential creditors sit ahead of unsecured ones in the queue — and that queue is long.

For the trade creditors further back, the outlook is bleak. Administrators said they do not anticipate sufficient recoveries to make any distribution to non-preferential unsecured creditors. Suppliers, subcontractors and other unsecured claimants are, on current numbers, looking at a full write-off on £885m of claims.

EY is still pursuing further high-value legal claims, with help from law firm Pinsent Masons, independent experts and former ISG employees. Those cases could shift the arithmetic, but nothing in the report suggests they'll close a gap of this size.

What is the administration itself costing?

Recorded administration time costs and expenses have reached £25.6m. EY's team has logged 16,262.7 hours, generating £11.03m in time costs — an average of roughly £679 an hour. Expenses across the eight companies add another £14.57m, covering third-party legal and professional fees, litigation funding and other administration spending.

In other words, the process of unwinding ISG has so far consumed more than half of everything recovered. That ratio will tighten as legal claims land, but it frames the arithmetic facing creditors: every pound recovered is already spoken for by the insolvency machinery, HMRC's preferential claim and the cost of chasing the rest.

Unless the remaining legal actions deliver a step change in recoveries, the £885m claimed by trade creditors stays where it is — written off.