The genuine regret with which numerous market commentators and former partners talk of Ince’s downfall arguably bears testament to the firm’s historic repute. Many remember the controversial rescue deal which saw listed firm Gordon Dadds snap up Ince & Co in 2019 as part of a pre-pack administration. As one rival shipping partner recalls: ‘When the news broke, there were quite a few people on my floor in the shipping market and they were upset about what they saw as the collapse of an institution.’
Neither Ince nor the market were under any illusions. This was very much a rescue deal, not the culmination of a longstanding strategy. A few months after the deal, a scathing March 2019 administrator report from Quantuma found that the Ince business would have collapsed just weeks later had the deal not gone through. It noted that the equity partners had ‘no appetite’ to step in and raise £8.5m in additional capital to save the firm. Responding to the report at the time, Ince’s then managing partner in Germany, Jan Hungar, conceded: ‘This demonstrates what we said at the time of the acquisition, that the deal with Gordon Dadds was essential to ensure that Ince continued to operate and enable us to grow.’
