Ideal Shopping Direct revealed it has incurred a worse than expected hit of £9.2m to its balance sheet, £7.5m more than previously expected.

The extra costs came to light after the new management team at Ideal conducted a review of its balance sheet ahead of next month’s publication of its full-year results to December 28.

The extra one-off and exceptional costs include around £2.6m of stock write downs,£2.2m of fixed asset write downs related to IT systems. It has also incurred exceptional costs from, amongst other items, the anticipated loss of deposits for collapsed Icelandic bank Kaupthing.

Ideal’s loss for the period is still expected to be£4m, in line with expectations.

Ideal chief executive Mike Hancox said: “I am pleased to report that while there has been an increase in exceptional and one-off charges in 2008 as a result of the balance sheet review, sales and cash generated from operating activities for the current financial year are slightly ahead of plan. The company is trading satisfactorily given the challenging retail environment.”

  • Separately Ideal announced that its commercial director Pamela Aujla has resigned with immediate effect.