Bramall ups Lookers stake
TONY Bramall has increased his shareholding in car dealer Lookers to more than 20%.
The Yorkshire car sales veteran has acquired a further 397,000 shares in the Manchester-based business to take his shareholding from 18.8% to 21.24%.
Lookers said Mr Bramall, who is a non-executive director of Lookers, and his “family interests” paid between 33.5p and 34p for the ordinary shares of 5p each.
If all were bought at the top price, the sum for the shares was £134,980.
Earlier this year, Lookers acquired rival Dutton Forshaw from Harrogate-based Bramall and Jones for £1.75m and £2m of debt. The purchase included two VW dealerships and a contract hire fleet of 1,500 vehicles.
Lookers made the acquisition from Mr Bramall, who founded Bramall and Jones in 2004 after the £230m sale of his CD Bramall motor retail business.
Mr Bramall, who joined the board of Lookers in July 2006, trained as an accountant in his home town of Sheffield before going to run his father’s motor business in Bradford in the early 1960s, building it up before floating it on the stock market in 1978 and then selling it to Avis in 1987 for £97m in a deal which made him his first fortune estimated at £45m.
Three years later he began again, building Harrogate-based CD Bramall – which also floated – from scratch and turning it into one of the market leaders.
