London
Investors in Purplebricks are likely to end up with next to nothing even if the beleaguered online estate agency manages to find a buyer for itself, the company warned on Tuesday. The confession lopped another two-thirds off the share price, which had already lost two-thirds since Helena Marston took over as CEO last spring, says Tom Howard in The Times. That has left Purplebricks with a market capitalisation of only £6.3m – down from £1.5bn in 2017 and less than the £11m asking price for a five-bedroom penthouse in south London on its website. It’s all a far cry from a decade ago, when the agency, launched in 2014, had won early backing from the likes of now-disgraced fund manager Neil Woodford with its cheap upfront-fees and no high-street presence. But while traditional agencies benefited from pandemic-related demand, somehow Purplebricks missed out. Boardroom mis-steps, management upheaval and profit warnings followed. Marston, just 41 and promoted rapidly from within the company’s human resources
