Week Ending: Family fortunes; ‘fancy dress’ jockeys; Daisy’s £500m deal
THEY say entrepreneurs are born and not made and there was proof there is something a bit special in the DNA of the Speakman family, after a second multi-million travel sector deal this week.
Son Dominic led the way in August as he sold his tour operator Destinology to Saga for £20m , but was trumped by dad David, who sold a controlling stake in his Travel Counsellors Group to private equity firm Equistone.
Although the value of the Travel Counsellors deal was strictly hush-hush, a figure of £100m has been reported, which if it’s even half true would mean the Speakmans won’t be travelling in economy class anytime soon.
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GRAND National winner Mick Fitzgerald told a surreal story about a night out in Liverpool when he appeared at the inaugural Sportsman’s Curry Club in Manchester last week.
After starving himself for a weekend to get down to racing weight, and getting changed into his jockey gear for a race at Aintree, he was told, along with the others, that the race was off.
They were all desperate for food and drink so headed straight into Liverpool city centre, still dressed as jockeys (they didn’t have their normal clothes for some reason), and started “drinking and eating everything”.
“I remember sitting in a chicken place across the road from the Adelphi and we were still dressed as jockeys.”
They even went to a disco at the Adelphi and everyone thought they were in fancy dress.
“The next morning I was really hungover and I’d gone from 10 stone 2Ib to 11 stone. We then got told the race was back on so we had to go through it all again.”
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THE £500m take-private of Nelson-based Telecoms business Daisy is clearly a good deal for shareholders.
At 185p it’s a 16% premium to the share price before takeover talks started, and you will have doubled your money if you bought in when the business floated in 2009 at 80p a share.
The group’s non-executive chairman, Peter Dubens, is one of a number of independent directors who have backed the deal, considering it “fair and reasonable”.
But he stands to earn £2.9m from an “exit award” owed if there’s a change of control. There is also Mr Dubens’ Oakley Capital Corporate Finance which is advising Daisy and is owed a fee of £4.3m once the deal becomes unconditional. This means he stands to gain, directly and indirectly, £7.2m from the deal.
Daisy’s nominated adviser Liberum has advised shareholders that the terms of these arrangements are “fair and reasonable”.
Mr Dubens has agreed to waive £500,000 of the exit award. Chief executuve Matthew Riley, who’s leading the buyout, is entitled to an exit award of £5.9m but he is waiving his right to it.
