Oxygen to sell remaining assets

Oxygen has announced its intention to sell all its remaining assets.

The company has agreed to sell specialist event insurance broker Robertson Taylor to Entertainment Insurance Partners (EIP) for an undisclosed sum.

Robertson Taylor, acquired by Oxygen in 2007, employs 75 staff in offices in the UK and USA. All staff and clients of Robertson Taylor will transfer to EIP on completion of the sale.

EIP is a global group of more than 130 entertainment insurance and risk advisory specialsts. It has a specific focus on music, sports and theatre.

Oxygen’s decisition to sell all its assets comes amid challenging times for brokers in general and at the company in particular.

“Despite Oxygen’s successes in both developing businesses from scratch and acquiring businesses, we have been impacted by tough trading and some particularly adverse situations in the last few years,” Oxygen chief executive Nigel Barton said in a statement.

He added: “Our strategy had been to sell the Oxygen group as a single transaction, but it became clear to us that the challenges of integrating each division of Oxygen into the relevant divisions of a single acquiring business were going to make this plan impractical. As a result, the board of directors concluded that the disposal of individual business units would better achieve the optimum objective for clients and shareholders.”