Category Archives: Private equity

Bidding battle for NHS landlord Assura intensifies as watchdog steps up investigation

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US suitor KKR lobbies board to accept offer to take Assura private as CMA looks into £1.79bn offer by rival UK investor

The bidding battle for the NHS landlord Assura has heated up after its US suitor KKR lobbied the board to accept its offer, while the competition watchdog stepped up its investigation of Assura’s £1.7bn takeover by a rival UK healthcare investor.

Primary Health Properties (PHP), which invests in buildings housing GP practices, has been blocked from fully integrating Assura by the Competition and Markets Authority while it looks into the takeover.

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Private equity fund offers car tycoon €1.1m to settle claim over investment cash

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Big Motoring World founder Peter Waddell says Freshstream made him forfeit sum as it saw him as a nuisance

A private equity company accused of ousting a multimillionaire used car salesman from his own business has offered to pay €1.1m (£950,000) to settle a separate case with him.

Peter Waddell filed his first high court claim against Freshstream last year, alleging that the investment firm used an independent investigation into contested sexist, racist and abusive comments “as a means of securing [his] exclusion” from his used car empire, Big Motoring World. Freshstream had acquired a one-third share in Big during 2022.

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Decision on foreign state stakes in UK press could end Telegraph limbo

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Cap of 15% could allow US firm RedBird Capital to finalise deal to buy titles after two years of uncertainty

The government will allow foreign states to own stakes of up to 15% in British newspapers in a move that could finally end two years of uncertainty over the ownership of the Telegraph titles.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is to announce the limit on Thursday through the introduction of a new statutory instrument in parliament, ending a months-long consultation involving intensive lobbying by newspaper owners.

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RedBird Capital confident of tabling a deal to take control of Telegraph

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Guardian understands plan from US private equity firm to form a consortium or self-fund could come as soon as next month

The US private equity firm RedBird Capital is confident of tabling a deal to take control of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph as soon as next month, in an attempt to end two years of “paralysis and unhappiness” at the 170-year-old titles.

The firm’s founder, Gerry Cardinale, is personally involved in drafting a plan to either form a consortium or self-fund a takeover at Telegraph Media Group, the Guardian understands.

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US owner of UK pharmacy chain Boots to be taken private in $10bn deal

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Walgreens Boots Alliance sold to Sycamore Partners and ends almost a century of trading on public markets

The US owner of the high street pharmacy chain Boots is to be taken private in a $10bn (£7.8bn) deal that will bring an end to almost a century of trading on public markets for Walgreens Boots Alliance.

The company, which operates more than 1,800 Boots stores in the UK, has been sold to the US private equity firm Sycamore Partners after struggling in the internet era as customers have turned to online shopping for cheaper products.

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UK hospitality group Loungers to be bought by US firm for £338m

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London-listed company strikes deal with Fortress Investment Group, although shareholder approval needed

The cafe bar business Loungers has agreed to be bought by a US investment group in a deal that values it at about £338m.

Fortress Investment Group said it had made an offer for the UK hospitality group through a newly formed investment vehicle.

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Rachel Reeves’s most irritating manifesto fudge: private equity’s tax loophole | Nils Pratley

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Labour said it would bring taxation of performance-related pay in the industry in line with others – but the chancellor had a change of heart

It has been almost two decades since Nicholas Ferguson, a grand figure in the private equity business, caused a storm by talking out loud about his industry’s dirty little secret. It could not be right, he said, that highly remunerated private equity executives could pay less tax than a cleaner or other low-paid workers.

Things have moved on a bit since 2007. So-called “carried interest”, or carry – the portion of an investment profit that the private equity managers retain as a bonus for success – is now taxed at 28% under the capital gains regime; in the old days, rates in effect as low as 10% could be secured thanks to various exceptions.

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France warns US buyer of Sanofi division of penalties for shifting production abroad

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Private equity firm CD&R revealed to be in exclusive talks to buy 50% stake in consumer healthcare arm Opella

The French government has warned a US private equity firm buying the consumer healthcare arm of the drugmaker Sanofi that it faces penalties of more than €100m if it does not keep production and jobs in France.

Sanofi is splitting off Opella, which makes the paracetamol brand Doliprane, the laxative Dulcolax and other over-the-counter medicines and vitamins. However, news of talks with the New York-based Clayton, Dubilier & Rice on 11 October prompted fears about French jobs and the loss of control to a foreign company.

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Private equity barons lean on Rachel Reeves to water down proposals for higher taxes

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With the budget and Starmer’s investment summit approaching, the industry’s lobbyists are in full cry over ‘carried interest’

When the future deputy prime minister Angela Rayner walked the floor of a bespoke kitchen outfitter’s warehouse in October 2022, she was doing more than gladhanding local workers in her Greater Manchester constituency.

The real reason Rayner had been invited to tour Goyt Kitchen Fabrications in Ashton-under-Lyne was not to see how the firm had fared through the Covid pandemic, but to be sold the benefits of private equity. Goyt’s bosses had taken a £200,000 investment from Welsh-government-backed FW Capital.

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Labour to announce £10bn AI project in Northumberland backed by pro-Trump billionaire

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Stephen Schwarzman’s Blackstone Group will fund data centre bringing 4,000 jobs to north-east England

Keir Starmer is set to announce the creation of a £10bn AI datacentre, bringing 4,000 jobs to north-east England, which will be funded by a private equity firm run by a big Donald Trump supporter.

The prime minister is due to host chief executives in New York on Thursday, where he is trying to drum up interest in foreign investment into the UK. He will hail the investment in an “artificial intelligence datacentre” – due to be built in Blyth in Northumberland by Blackstone – as a “vote of confidence in the UK”.

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Billionaire Guy Hands’ property firm takes housing reforms to European court

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Annington Property fears recent legislation will force it to offload some of the 38,000 freeholds it owns on UK military homes

A property company founded by the billionaire Guy Hands has taken a legal fight with the UK government to the European court of human rights over fears it could lose significant sums as a result of planned housing reforms.

Annington Property, which owns the freehold of about 38,000 military homes, has filed the claim against the housing minister, Angela Rayner, over concerns that the new Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act could force it to off-load the homes well below market value. Last month it launched a challenge in the high court on the same grounds.

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Private equity ownership of US hospice centers boomed in recent years – study

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Investors spent about $1tn buying healthcare facilities over last decade, leading to reports of worsening patient care

Private equity investors are increasingly buying up hospice centers – healthcare facilities meant to focus on pain relief and emotional support for people near the end of their lives.

The new study was published in the journal Health Affairs and provides more evidence of how private equity have acquired firms using often sophisticated and opaque ownership structures.

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Vets extend strike in first industrial action to hit Britain’s pet-care sector

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Staff at a practice in Wales have accused its private-equity-backed owner of poor pay and overcharging customers

Staff working at a chain of commercial vet surgeries have extended their strike, accusing their private-equity-backed owner of underpaying workers and overcharging pet owners as part of the first industrial action to hit the veterinary sector in the UK.

Unionised vets, nurses and support staff at Valley Vets in south Wales, which is owned by one of the largest veterinary corporations in the country, VetPartners, decided last week to stay out until the end of the month, in the latest move in an increasingly bitter dispute.

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Union calls for urgent action to protect jobs as Asda ‘fights for survival’

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GMB accuses owner TDR Capital of mismanagement as sales at supermarket fall 6%

The GMB union has called on the owner of Asda to take “urgent action” to protect jobs amid signs the supermarket is “in a fight for survival”.

On Tuesday data revealed sales at Asda fell 6% in the three months to 4 August, despite continuing grocery price inflation, taking the retailer’s share of the UK take-home grocery market to 12.6% – the lowest level in at least 13 years.

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UK urged to protect Ukraine from legal action over private debt default

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Kyiv shouldn’t have to fight ‘shameless bondholders’ as repayment deadline nears, say campaigners

Campaigners are urging Britain’s new Labour government to prevent Ukraine being sued in the UK courts if the country defaults on its debts to private creditors.

Debt Justice said a two-year suspension of Ukraine’s debt payments was scheduled to expire on 1 August, and that action was needed to protect Kyiv from the possibility of legal action from its creditors.

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Asda-owning Issa brothers go their separate ways amid family rift

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Union warns of risks to shoppers and staff after Zuber Issa sells 22.5% supermarket stake to private equity co-owners TDR Capital

The billionaire brothers who part-own Asda have gone their separate ways, with Zuber Issa selling his shares in the supermarket to the private equity firm TDR Capital amid a rift between the siblings.

Zuber owned 22.5% of the Leeds-based grocery chain after a £6.8bn takeover alongside his older brother Mohsin and TDR three years ago. The sale of his stake had been expected for months, but was thought to have been complicated by lock-in agreements.

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Asda now the most expensive UK supermarket to buy fuel, study shows

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Chain once prided itself on selling the cheapest fuel but RAC analysis shows it is now the dearest

Asda is now the UK’s most expensive supermarket fuel seller, research shows, after the retailer’s private owners ditched its long-held pledge to be the cheapest on the market.

The retailer, which was bought by the billionaire Issa brothers and their private equity partner TDR Capital in 2021, charged an average 2.1p a litre more for unleaded petrol than rivals Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons at the end of May, according to an analysis by the RAC motoring organisation.

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Dividends payments soar globally as worker pay stagnates

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Shareholder payouts grew 14 times faster than wages over past three years, says Oxfam report

Shareholders have proved to be more successful at securing bumper payouts than workers have at winning higher pay, according to two studies that show dividends outstripping wages by a considerable margin in recent years.

Oxfam said analysis of global data showed that dividend payments to shareholders over the last three years grew an average of 14 times faster than worker pay across 31 major economies.

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‘Profiteering off children’: care firms in England accused of squeezing cash from councils

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A local authority leader claims private equity groups are exploiting vulnerable youngsters in care homes in the pursuit of profit

Care companies are insisting on unnecessary and expensive support packages for vulnerable children to boost their profits, a council leader has claimed.

Barry Lewis, the Tory leader of Derbyshire county council, said that former family-run businesses acquired by private equity groups were trying to get “as much cash as possible” out of local authorities.

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The Body Shop files intention to appoint administrators

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Process likely to lead to job losses and store closures, and threaten source of sales for global network of small farmers and producers

When Anita Roddick sold The Body Shop in 2006, she left behind not just a thriving cosmetics and skincare empire but living proof that a business could follow strict ethical guidelines and still make healthy profits.

But on Monday, the private equity-owned company filed the intention to appoint administrators.

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