Crest Nicholson will announce a deal with its lenders that will see it exchange £630m ($913m) of net debt for a 90 per cent stake in the company.

The indebted privately-owned housebuilder, which currently builds about 2,000 homes a year and is concentrated in the South East and the Midlands, was taken private by a 50-50 venture between HBOS and Sir Tom Hunter, the Scottish entrepreneur, close to the peak of the housing market in May 2007. Since last summer it has struggled to restructure net debt associated with the buy-out, which had risen to £1.15bn ahead of the debt-for-equity swap.