Former Conran restaurant empire D&D to change hands in £100m takeover

Published

3 years ago

October 2, 2021

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The restaurant empire founded by Sir Terence Conran is to change hands for the first time in nearly a decade after its owners entered exclusive talks with a little-known private equity investor.

Sky News has learnt that D&D, which owns prominent London restaurants such as the Bluebird in Chelsea, Coq d’Argent in the heart of the City, and Skylon on the South Bank, is close to being bought by Montecito Equity Partners.

Sources said that the talks were several weeks from being concluded and that a deal was expected to place an enterprise value on D&D of about £100m.

If completed, it will be the first time since 2013 that control of Sir Terence’s former business has changed ownership, and will come just over a year after the death of one of Britain’s most influential designers.

It will also represent a bet on the recovery of central London’s fine dining scene in the wake of the pandemic, with D&D’s roughly 40 UK restaurants having been closed for chunks of the last 18 months.

Most of D&D’s sites, many of which became renowned as celebrity haunts, are in the capital, although it also operates restaurants in Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, New York and Paris.

A new venture in Birmingham is scheduled to open next spring.

Little is known about D&D’s financial performance since the start of the pandemic: according to Companies House, its accounts for the period to 30 September 2020 were due to have been filed by Thursday.

The stuttering return of office workers to the centre of London, which has been delayed by emerging strains of coronavirus and permanently reshaped by employers’ differing policies on remote working, has nevertheless offered encouragement to hospitality bosses that hotel and restaurant businesses will regain their financial viability.

Some of the city’s best-known restaurants, such as Le Caprice, owned by the tycoon Richard Caring, have closed their doors permanently during the pandemic, while numerous casual dining chains have been forced into restructuring or insolvency processes.

Sir Terence pioneered new trends in upmarket dining when Le Pont de la Tour near the Tower of London and Quaglino’s in St James’s opened in the early 1990s.

D&D is named after the current chairman Des Gunewardena and deputy chairman David Loewi, who took on the business when they bought a stake in Conran Restaurants in 2006.

In 2013, LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group, took control of the business.

The buyout firm considered listing D&D on the stock market in 2015 but a flotation did not materialise.

A subsequent restaurant venture of Sir Terence’s, which owned outlets including Lutyens on Fleet Street, was forced to call in administrators in 2018.

Interpath Advisory, the former restructuring unit of KPMG UK, has been advising on the sale of D&D as it widens its offering into the provision of general corporate finance advice, according to people close to the process.

Little is known about the investment history of Montecito, which is based in Kensington.

The firm was founded by Pravir Singh, a former UBS executive who “led coverage for a number of the bank’s most substantial billionaire clients”, according to Montecito’s website.

The exact structure of its acquisition of D&D was unclear this weekend, although one insider said it was possible that LDC would retain a small stake in the business.

LDC, Montecito and Interpath declined to comment this weekend, while D&D has been contacted for comment.

Business

Post Office campaigner Sir Alan Bates says he is yet to receive reply to letter to PM

Published

2 hours ago

November 5, 2024

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Post Office campaigner Sir Alan Bates says he is yet to receive reply to letter to PM

Post Office campaigner Sir Alan Bates is yet to receive a reply from Sir Keir Starmer, despite writing to him over a month ago.

Sir Alan said he had written to the prime minister to remind him the “clock is still ticking” on a financial redress deadline for victims.

In his letter, he demanded a March 2025 deadline for compensation for sub-postmaster victims of the Horizon scandal.

Sir Alan confirmed to Sky News he was yet to hear back from the prime minister.

“It was over a month ago,” he said.

“I sent him a reminder yesterday. I told him the clock is still ticking and it’s now five months from the March deadline, which I’m told is still achievable by other professionals.

“So let’s get on with it, that’s all we want. Get on with it.”

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Business

Vodafone and Three merger could get green light, says UK’s competition watchdog

Published

9 hours ago

November 5, 2024

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Vodafone and Three merger could get green light, says UK's competition watchdog

A £15bn merger between two of the UK’s biggest mobile networks could get the green light – if they stick to their commitments to invest in the country’s infrastructure, the competition watchdog has said.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said the merger of Vodafone and Three had “the potential to be pro-competitive for the UK mobile sector”.

Announced last year, the proposed £15bn merger would bring 27 million customers together under a single provider.

The watchdog previously warned that tens of millions of mobile phone users could end up paying more if the merger went ahead.

However, the two groups recently set out plans to protect consumer pricing and boost network investment.

The CMA has now laid out a list of “remedies” required for the deal to go-ahead.

They include the networks committing to freezing certain tariffs and data plans for at least three years to protect customers from short-term price rises in the early years of the network plan.

Stuart McIntosh, chair of the inquiry group leading the investigation, said on Tuesday: “We believe this deal has the potential to be pro-competitive for the UK mobile sector if our concerns are addressed.

“Our provisional view is that binding commitments combined with short-term protections for consumers and wholesale providers would address our concerns while preserving the benefits of this merger.

“A legally binding network commitment would boost competition in the longer term and the additional measures would protect consumers and wholesale customers while the network upgrades are being rolled out.”

Today’s announcement is provisional, with a final decision due before 7 December. The inquiry group is inviting feedback on today’s announcement by 5pm on 12 November.

The CMA also published a list of potential solutions – which it called remedies – to issues it identified with the merger.

If the networks want the merger to go ahead, the watchdog requires Vodafone and Three to:

• Deliver a joint network plan to set out network upgrades and improvements over eight years;

• Commit to keeping certain existing tariff costs and data plans for at least three years to protect customers from price hikes;

• Commit to pre-agreed prices and contract terms so Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) – mobile providers that do not own the networks they operate on – can obtain competitive wholesale deals.

Vodafone and Three are two of the biggest mobile firms in the UK, and their networks support a number of MVNOs including Asda Mobile, Lebara, Voxi, and Smarty.

Responding to the watchdog’s announcement, a spokesperson for Vodafone on behalf of the merger said: “The merger will be a catalyst for positive change.

“It will bring significant benefits to businesses and consumers throughout the UK, and it will bring advanced 5G to every school and hospital across the country.

“The merger is also closely aligned with the government’s mission to drive growth and to encourage more private investment in the UK.”

Earlier this year, Three’s chief executive hit out at the UK’s “abysmal” 5G speeds and availability as he urged regulators to approve the company’s merger with Vodafone.

Robert Finnegan noted his firm’s “cash flows have been negative since 2020 and our costs have almost doubled in five years, meaning investment in [the] network is unsustainable”.

“UK mobile networks rank an abysmal 22nd out of 25 in Europe on 5G speeds and availability, with the dysfunctional structure of the market denying us the ability to invest sustainably to fix this situation,” he added.

Business

Bosses rail at business secretary over ‘avalanche of costs’

Published

24 hours ago

November 4, 2024

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Bosses rail at business secretary over 'avalanche of costs'

Business leaders expressed frustration with ministers on Monday amid a growing budget backlash that bosses said would trigger an “avalanche of costs” and leave them with no choice but to slash investment and increase prices.

Sky News has learnt that bosses of large retail and hospitality companies and trade associations told Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, that last week’s budget risked damaging consumer confidence and exacerbating challenges facing the UK economy.

Among the dozens of companies represented on the call are said to have been Burger King UK, Fuller Smith & Turner, Greene King, Kingfisher and the supermarket chain Morrisons.

Mr Reynolds is said to have acknowledged that Rachel Reeves‘s inaugural fiscal statement had “asked a lot” of British business, with James Murray, the financial secretary to the Treasury, understood to have described it as “a once-in-a-generation budget”, according to several people briefed on the call.

One insider said that Nick Mackenzie, the chief executive of Greene King, had highlighted that the increase in employers’ national insurance (NI) contributions would cause “a £20m shock” to the company, while Fullers is understood to have warned that it would be forced to halve annual investment from £60m to £30m as a result of increased cost pressures.

Rami Baitieh, the Morrisons chief executive, told Mr Reynolds that the budget had exacerbated “an avalanche of costs” for businesses next year, and asked what the government could do to mitigate them.

Sources added that the CBI, the employers’ group, said its impact would be “severe”, while the British Beer & Pub Association added that there was now a disincentive to invest and flagged “a tsunami” of higher costs.

The range of comments on the call with ministers underlines the scale of discontent in the private sector about Labour’s first budget for nearly 15 years.

Only a small number of interventions during the discussion are said to have been in support of measures announced last week, with the Federation of Small Businesses understood to have praised the doubling of the employment allowance, which would see many of the smallest employers having their NI bills cut by £2,000.

The Department for Business and Trade has been contacted for comment, while none of the companies contacted by Sky News would comment.