The company that bought troubled homes and garden retailer Rathwood after it entered examinership have announced that the \u201cworking relationship\u201d between it and the two brothers who ran it before the insolvency process began has come to an end. <\/p>\n
Evergreen Home & Garden Holdings issued a statement on Monday afternoon saying its relationship with James and Thomas Keogh was now over.<\/p>\n
The move comes just days after The Irish Times revealed how the two brothers remained heavily involved<\/a> in the company and were in regular communication with the new owners about the day-to-day running of the business until late last week.<\/p>\n In July, the High Court<\/a> approved a \u20ac750,000 rescue scheme<\/a> which saw Kevin Nolan and a consortium he called Evergreen buying the operation. Customers and other creditors owed money by Rathwood were promised refunds of just 0.25 per cent as a result of the examinership.<\/p>\n Confirming the scheme, Judge Rory Mulcahy said the manner in which the business had been managed before its examinership remained of \u201csignificant concern\u201d and he noted liabilities of more than \u20ac21 million when it entered examinership.<\/p>\n Legal representatives of the Keogh family directors of Rathwood told the court James and Thomas Keogh were undertaking not to act as directors of the company for five years.<\/p>\n However, an extensive series of internal messages highlighted how the brothers were involved in discussions about which employees should be kept on or let go and how certain creditors and the business should be managed in the wake of a dramatic fall from grace in recent years.<\/p>\n In one exchange between James Keogh and Nolan, Keogh suggested that a \u20ac5,000 redundancy package for some staff was a \u201cclever\u201d move. <\/p>\n \u201cGive them no hope, only 3 days a week or \u20ac5,000,\u201d Keogh wrote, and suggested staff might choose to leave \u201cif they know there is NO hope of the big pay-off\u201d.<\/p>\n In another piece of correspondence, he dismissed an employee suggestion that the retailer\u2019s popular Christmas experience should involve local market stalls and craft markets. He said such stalls were a \u201cwaste of time and never pay\u201d. He described \u201ccraft people\u201d as \u201cpainful\u201d.<\/p>\n Keogh also said employees were \u201cscared\u201d of the new chief executive, \u201cwhich is ideal\u201d.<\/p>\n Last Friday, Nolan said he had \u201cdrawn on the knowledge and experience of the inherited Rathwood management team, including James and Thomas Keogh, to understand the business and support its transition\u201d, adding that \u201cgiven the complexity of the business and the circumstances in which it emerged from examinership, that was both necessary and commercially sensible\u201d.<\/p>\n In a fresh statement issued on Monday, Evergreen Home & Garden Holdings said it could \u201cconfirm that the working relationship between Rathwood and members of the Keogh family has now ended\u201d.<\/p>\n It said that \u201cfollowing Evergreen\u2019s acquisition of Rathwood, members of the Keogh family provided information and operational assistance during a transitional period. That transition has now ended\u201d. <\/p>\n The statement stressed that Evergreen Home & Garden Holdings was \u201cthe sole owner of Rathwood and its CEO, Kevin Nolan, has full responsibility for its management, operations and future direction. <\/p>\n \u201cWe wish the Keogh family well for the future. Evergreen\u2019s focus is now firmly on Rathwood, its employees, customers and the continued development of the business.<\/p>\n \u201cEvergreen will not be making any further comment on the matter.\u201d<\/p>\n Complaints about Rathwood\u2019s inability to fulfil orders first emerged in mid-2025, with Rathwood\u2019s problems deepening last winter. In April, the company went into examinership, after which it emerged that about 7,000 customers had bought products from Rathwood that were never delivered, with close to \u20ac3 million owed.<\/p>\n During the examinership, the true scale of the financial problems at Rathwood started to emerge, with multiple suppliers, some of whom were owed hundreds of thousands of euro \u2013 and in some cases millions \u2013 left with virtually nothing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The company that bought troubled homes and garden retailer Rathwood after it entered examinership have announced that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,73,61,60,173552],"class_list":["post-617479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-rathwood-home-and-garden-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}