The sale was a ‘complex and fast-moving’ process, according to the administrators

A Bristol ambulance provider used by the NHS has been rescued from administration, saving hundreds of jobs and services. BAEMS (trading as Bristol Ambulance EMS) collapsed into administration last week after facing serious legal action earlier in May.

The private company provides emergency ambulances and specialist drivers to the NHS and other healthcare operators across the UK.

Its also offers non-emergency patient transport and a range of paediatric, neonatal and adult intensive care transfers, as well as supplying paramedic crews to the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust.

But earlier this month, HMRC lodged a petition for the business to be wound up, our sister site Bristol Live revealed, and on Friday Nick Harris and Lucinda Coleman of PKF Francis Clark were appointed as joint administrators.

On Friday (May 22), the administrators completed the sale of the business and its assets to EMED Group – a national provider of specialist transport and care services.

It is understood the transfer of operations was “carefully planned” to support continuity of transport and specialist ambulance services for patients, NHS partners and healthcare organisations across Bristol and the South West.

Around 315 staff and 120 ambulances and operational services across seven depots will transfer into EMED Group as part of the agreement.

Mr Harris, partner in the restructuring team at PKF Francis Clark, said: “BAEMS provides important ambulance and patient transport services across the South West and continuity of those services has been a key priority while we have been working with the company over recent weeks to explore all options to secure its future.

“Following a complex and fast-moving sale process, involving negotiations with several interested parties, we are pleased to have completed a sale of the business to EMED Group, protecting the jobs of all employees.

“This outcome supports continuity for patients, NHS partners and operational teams whilst enabling services to continue under EMED Group.”

Business Live understands that EMED Group will work with local operational teams, NHS partners and staff over the coming weeks to support services, maintain patient care and begin a phased integration of systems and back-office functions.

Craig Smith, group chief executive of EMED Group, said: “Our immediate priority is supporting patients, Bristol Ambulance colleagues and NHS partners through this transition and ensuring services continue to operate safely and effectively.

“Over the last 15 years Bristol Ambulance has built a great operation, with outstanding CQC reports, and provides critical services across the region that enable access to healthcare in a wide range of settings. We are pleased to welcome colleagues into our family.”

Rob Johnson, chief executive at Bristol Ambulance EMS, said the company’s priority during the process had been “protecting continuity of service for patients” while also supporting staff.

“EMED have demonstrated a clear commitment to maintaining services, supporting teams and working closely with NHS partners during the transition period,” he said.

“I would also like to thank colleagues across Bristol Ambulance EMS for their professionalism, resilience and continued dedication to patient care throughout what has understandably been a challenging period.”

It is understood the administrators have worked with commissioners and partners of BAEMS to transition all the contracts operated by the business.

They were assisted by Paul Evans of PME Consulting; Andrew Knox, restructuring and insolvency partner at Stephens Scown; and valuation agents Simon Bamford and Josh Chivers of Gordon Brothers.

The administrators said they would “undertake their statutory duties” as the administration process progresses, including investigating BAEMS’s financial position and the circumstances leading to the winding‑up petition brought by HMRC, and will report back to creditors.

Creditors are invited to direct any immediate enquiries to Dan Ott at PKF Francis Clark’s Bristol office on dan.ott@pkf-francisclark.co.uk.

The Icelandic-born billionaire behind Nasdaq-listed biosimilars group Alvotech has become the latest international entrepreneur to warn that Britain’s tax direction is making the country uninvestable for mobile capital.

Róbert Wessman, the 56-year-old founder and chief executive of Alvotech and the owner of fast-growing French wine venture Maison Wessman, has told Business Matters in an interview at his Pall Mall club that the “whole package” of inheritance tax, capital gains tax and political instability is steadily pushing him towards the exit.

“It’s just the whole scheme has changed so much, which makes it very difficult, not only for foreigners to come here, but for wealthy people, who live here, are born here, and have always been here, to basically stay here,” Wessman said.

His warning lands as Britain digests the most striking edition of the Sunday Times Rich List in living memory, with one in six members of the 2026 list dropping out and the UK billionaire population falling to 157, twenty fewer than four years ago. Almost a third of the 350 British nationals on the main list no longer live on the British mainland.

‘Not a pro-business country anymore’

Wessman, who moved his family from Reykjavík to London in 2019 and opened a Hammersmith head office for his Aztiq investment vehicle two years later, said he no longer regarded the UK as a pro-business destination.

“At the same time, the stability is not really there. You had Brexit, it was a big issue for the industry, for the country, for the business, and then all the tax legislation now,” he said.

He spoke before the former health secretary Wes Streeting, who has launched a Labour leadership bid against Sir Keir Starmer, pledged what he called a “wealth tax that works”, centred on aligning capital gains rates with income tax. The proposal has been costed by allies at around £12 billion a year.

Asked about politicians’ appetite for taxing the wealthy, Wessman was unsparing: “We see this in many countries, that this can be the flavour of the day for politicians. But in the end, countries are built on employment, on jobs, high-paying jobs preferably, value creation. And hopefully you can then benefit from having the business in the country.”

His comments echo a growing chorus of warnings from international business owners. Henley & Partners has forecast that Britain will lose more millionaires than any country bar China this year, and a BDO survey recently found that two-thirds of the UK’s ultra-wealthy have considered relocating, citing policy inconsistency as a bigger problem than the headline tax rate itself.

From Icelandic generics to Nasdaq biosimilars

Wessman has built, and lost, fortunes before. He turned Delta, an obscure Reykjavík generics business, into Actavis, one of the world’s largest generic drugmakers, before losing an estimated €250 million in the 2008 Icelandic banking crash. That episode triggered a long and bitter legal battle with fellow Icelandic financier Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson over a highly leveraged pre-crisis buyout.

Undeterred, he has founded seven companies over three decades and is now ploughing capital into Alvotech, the Nasdaq, Icelandic and Swedish-listed group he is positioning as a global challenger in biosimilars.

The group has invested $2 billion since 2013, employs 1,500 staff, most of them in Reykjavík, and is being built deliberately as the “fourth leg” of the Icelandic economy alongside fishing, tourism and manufacturing. Alvotech has five approved biosimilars on the market, generated revenues of $593 million last year and is guiding to $650 million to $700 million in 2026. It is currently valued at around $1 billion in New York.

Wessman holds a 35 per cent stake through Luxembourg-domiciled Aztiq, plus a further 30 per cent through a partnership with Temasek, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund, and private equity house CVC Capital Partners.

Biosimilars, close copies of complex biological drugs whose patents have expired, are notoriously expensive to develop and frequently trigger patent litigation, as Alvotech experienced in its dispute with AbbVie over the autoimmune blockbuster Humira. Wessman argues they are essential if state-funded healthcare systems are to avoid being “sunk” by the cost of modern biologics.

A château, two million bottles and Norah Jones

His diversification into wine began as a hobby with the 2004 acquisition of the 12th-century Château de Saint-Cernin, near Bergerac, and the release of an inaugural vintage in 2016. Maison Wessman is now on track to produce around two million bottles this year, supplying French retailer Intermarché and backed by the American jazz singer Norah Jones, whom Wessman met through a mutual contact after Enrique Iglesias played at his wedding.

‘We are leaving with a lot of capital, a lot of jobs’

Wessman, who is not a non-dom, said he moved to London “against the stream when Brexit was happening” because of the capital’s practical access to his businesses across Asia, the United States and central and eastern Europe. His Russian-born wife and six children are settled in “world-class” London schools.

“London is the most amazing city to live in. It has amazing education. It has everything to offer. It has amazing history,” he said.

But he believes Brexit was a strategic error for what he called “a very proud nation”, leaving Britain less integrated into European supply chains and badly diminished as a listing venue.

“Since Brexit, many of the big banks don’t ever bring up the UK as an alternative, as a listing venue anymore,” he said.

That listings problem now compounds with sweeping fiscal reform. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has scrapped the centuries-old non-dom regime and replaced it with a new four-year residence-based test for foreign income and gains, plus a residence-based inheritance tax that captures worldwide assets for those resident in the UK for ten of the previous twenty years. Capital gains tax rates were also lifted in the October 2024 Budget to 18 per cent and 24 per cent.

The early evidence is unflattering: around 1,800 non-doms have already quit the UK in the wake of the reforms, raising serious questions about whether the package will deliver the £34 billion Treasury revenue target.

Wessman said he had recently looked at properties in Milan and made clear he was reluctantly being pushed in that direction.

“I don’t regret paying high taxes in the UK,” he said, “but it has to be within certain certainties and scope. I’m sitting with my tax adviser getting an update two to three times a year of what might be coming next, and it’s all over the place. This is not encouraging anyone to live here.”

“I really love to live here. But overall, I think where you have mobile capital, which can be based anywhere, it will push more people out.

“We are leaving with a lot of capital. We are leaving with a lot of jobs. We are leaving without even thinking that the UK would be a good idea to build any manufacturing or R&D or anything. That’s the sad part of it.”

For a government banking on wealthy non-doms to part-fund public services, that is a warning shot from precisely the sort of internationally mobile, job-creating, IP-rich founder the Treasury insists it still wants to attract.

Amy Ingham

Amy is a newly qualified journalist specialising in business journalism at Business Matters with responsibility for news content for what is now the UK’s largest print and online source of current business news.

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Ofgem will on Wednesday reveal the level of the annual energy price cap for July to September

Households will this week find out how much energy bills are set to increase by from July when the price cap is updated as forecasts point to a rise of more than £200 and a painful winter of sky-high bills ahead due to the Iran war.

Regulator Ofgem will on Wednesday reveal the level of the annual energy price cap for July to September for a typical dual fuel household across England, Scotland and Wales.

Analysts Cornwall Insight predicted last week the cap will rise by £209 a year to £1,850 from July 1 – an increase of 13% on April’s £1,641 annual cap.

It sets a maximum price per unit of gas and electricity used, meaning households only pay for the amount of energy they use.

This means households will be largely shielded over the warm summer months, but concerns are growing over a painful hit when the cap is reviewed in October and energy demand rises as temperatures drop.

Cornwall Insight’s forecasts suggest the cap in October will be at a similar level to July, even if the Middle East conflict were to end soon, due to the physical damage to infrastructure and lingering effect of disrupted supply.

Calls have been mounting for the Government to set out action to support the most vulnerable, but Chancellor Rachel Reeves stopped short of any immediate energy measures in her cost-of-living plan.

She told MPs last week: “We stand ready to act if market conditions worsen significantly later this year and I have been leading cross-Government contingency work on design of potential future targeted and temporary support for businesses.”

Energy costs have been sent rocketing higher by Iran’s move to block the crucial Strait of Hormuz shipping route, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas is carried.

But households have yet to feel the impact, as the price cap is reviewed on a quarterly basis, and April saw a 7% drop thanks to Government measures to reduce bills.

This included moving 75% of the cost of the UK’s renewables obligation from household bills on to general taxation, and scrapping the energy company obligation scheme.

Campaigners have warned over an “extremely difficult winter” ahead for the most vulnerable without extra support on bills.

Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said: “Households need reassurance and support, not a summer of suspense. That means the Government must act before winter to spell out what support will be available.”

The Government has insisted that “tackling the affordability crisis is our number one priority”.

Its package of support measures so far includes a cut in the rate of VAT on attraction tickets over the summer holidays, free bus travel for children in England during August, extending the 5p-per-litre fuel duty reduction and lowering import tariffs on more than 100 types of food products.

But the lack of further action on energy bills is seen as holding back spending by cash-strapped consumers.

Economist Martin Beck, at WPI Strategy, said recent official figures showing lower retail sales in April was already a sign that “energy pressures are biting”.

“Higher petrol prices, the prospect of an increase in household energy bills in July and weakening consumer sentiment all point to a more cautious spending backdrop,” he said.

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