Amber Taverns sold to LGV
PRESTON-based pub company Amber Taverns has been sold in a secondary buy-out deal to LGV Capital, the private equity arm of insurance giant Legal & General.
The company, which owns and operates 56 community pubs, has backed the existing management team of Clive Preston (Chairman), James Baer (Joint MD), Bryan Wardman (Joint MD), Michael Norris (Finance Director) and Gary Roberts (Operations Director).
A sale price for the business, which was started in 2005, has not been disclosed, although it is believed that the deal valued the business at £35m.
Preston said that the firm’s original backers, Unicorn Asset Management, Acuity Capital Management and MaxCap Partners, had received 2.7x their original investment in cash as a result of the new deal following their five-year investment.
“This is an excellent result for all parties,” he said.
“Our management have taken a financial stake in the acquiring vehicle and are aiming to make it one of the fastest-growing pub owner/operators in the UK. The team has the ability to double the size of the business in the next three-to-four years with the help and support of LGV.
“Our policy of purchasing carefully selected distressed or closed pubs in busy locations in the North of England and then making a significant investment in refurbishing them has been hugely successful,” he added.
He said that its operating model, which included showing sport on big screens, reasonable pricing of drinks and incentivising pub managers by paying them a percentage of sales was being looked at by other operators as a way of improving their offer.
“Large managed houses will continue to work well on payroll but we believe our hybrid approach is the way forward for much of the pub stock in this country,” said Preston.
Bill Priestley, a managing director at LGV, said: “We are delighted to have completed the acquisition of Amber Taverns. The death of community pubs has been significantly over-exaggerated in recent years and Amber is a perfect example of a business which has quietly gone about disproving the rule that pubs can only succeed where there is a food offering.”
He added that this was LGV’s fourth investment in the pubs sector.
“In each of these, we were attracted by the quality of the pubs and the strength of the management teams we were backing and Amber is no exception.”
Earlier this week, it was confirmed that LGV had placed the UK arm of Wilmslow-based gyms chain Total Fitness into administration. The business has since been sold to Barclays Ventures.
