The Sunday Times - UK (2021-12-19)

4

BUSINESS

The restructuring practice

spun out of KPMG has beefed

up its leadership team with

the appointment of several

prominent figures, including

former Marks & Spencer

chairman Lord (Stuart) Rose.

Rose, who chairs Asda and

the petrol forecourts empire

EG Group, both owned by the

billionaire brothers Mohsin

and Zuber Issa, has agreed to

chair Interpath’s special

advisory board. The board

comprises Christine Cross, a

veteran retail consultant, and

Phil Popham, former boss of

the luxury car-maker Lotus.

Interpath has also hired

the former Bank of America

Merrill Lynch investment

banker Simon Mackenzie

Smith, and Tamara Box,

managing director of the law

firm Reed Smith in Europe.

Interpath’s main board is

chaired by John Connolly, the

former Deloitte boss.

Interpath was sold by

KPMG to the private equity

firm HIG Europe in March

amid pressure on the “big

four” accountants to reduce

conflicts of interest between

their audit practices and

other parts of their

businesses. Weeks before

Interpath’s sale to HIG,

Deloitte spun off its

restructuring business to the

American PR and consulting

firm Teneo.

KPMG and HIG have a

controversial history. In

August, the accountancy firm

was fined £13 million and

severely reprimanded by the

industry watchdog for

pushing the bed-maker

Silentnight into

administration in 2011, then

helping HIG to buy it without

the pension scheme.

Interpath, which has about

Oliver Shah 550 staff, has been trying to

expand into services besides

restructuring since leaving

KPMG. In September, it hired

four new executives to push

into deal advisory, forensic

accounting and valuations.

Its recent projects include

acting as administrator to the

parent company of collapsed

energy supplier Bulb.

Rose, 72, is well known in

retail, having sold Topshop

owner Arcadia to Philip

Green in 2002, before

defending M&S against a

hostile takeover bid from

Green two years later. His

Interpath move follows a

longstanding advisory role at

private equity firm

Bridgepoint, which ended

when the firm floated in July.

Rose said: “I know a lot of

people in the trade. I’ve been

around a long time, and if I

can help Interpath in any way

Triumph turns 120 next year then I will.”

Heritage motorbike brand

Triumph Motorcycles roared

back into the black this year

after a surge in sales.

Bikes made by the

manufacturer, based in

Hinckley in Leicestershire,

featured in the new James

Bond film No Time to Die. It

swung to a £50.1 million pre-

tax profit in the year to June

30 from a £40 million loss the

year before. Sales at Triumph

Motorcycles Group jumped

28 per cent to £613.2 million

as it shipped more than

76,000 bikes — 22,000 more

than the year before.

Triumph, which has been

owned by billionaire

housebuilder John Bloor for

nearly four decades, makes

most of its sales overseas.

The firm was forced to cut

jobs in 2020 as Covid-19

temporarily slammed the

brakes on demand. Triumph

shed nearly 150 staff, around

a quarter of its UK workforce,

but said it had made “a strong

recovery... following the

significant losses due to the

impact of the pandemic”. The

recovery came despite

ongoing global shipping

issues and a shortage of

microchips, which is

blighting the car industry.

Triumph said that over the

past 12 months it had

continued “major

Jon Yeomans

Former M&S boss Rose blooms

at KPMG restructuring spin-out

in the picture, having

proposed a possible joint

venture with BT Sport.

London-based DAZN,

which is heavily loss-making,

has talked about snapping up

football rights in the UK for

several years. Buying BT

Sport would give it access to

Premier League games and

exclusive rights to screen the

Champions League in the UK.

But talks over a deal have

stalled following demands by

DAZN for BT to cover the cost

of customers who receive BT

Sport for free as part of their

broadband package going on

to ditch it after it becomes a

standalone service.

Discovery has proposed a

joint venture with BT that

would lead to the former

state monopoly selling its

stake over time.

BT, DAZN and Discovery

declined to comment on talks

over BT Sport.

BT Sport sale held up

until after Christmas

BT’s hopes of offloading BT

Sport by Christmas have been

dashed as negotiations with

Sir Leonard Blavatnik’s

streaming service DAZN and

other bidders are set to run

into the new year.

Bosses at BT had hoped to

sign a deal for the sports

broadcaster, valued at about

£600 million, by this week.

Chief executive Philip

Jansen wants to sell BT Sport,

which was launched under

predecessor Gavin Patterson

in 2013, in order to focus on

connecting Britain to full-

fibre broadband.

However, talks with

potential bidders are

dragging on. DAZN, which

shows boxing in the UK, is

seen as the front-runner in

the process, which is being

run by bankers at Lazard. US

cable giant Discovery is also

Jamie Nimmo

Triumph motors back into

profit with 28% rise in sales

investment” by launching or

updating 11 models. Its

flagship for next year will be

the Tiger 1200, a lighter and

more powerful bike than

previous versions, as the

brand gears up to celebrate

its 120th anniversary.

Separately, Lotus Cars

revealed it slumped to a

£58 million loss in the year to

December 2020 after the

pandemic savaged demand

for its sports cars in what it

described as a “very

challenging year”. It sold

1,189 vehicles last year, a fall

of about a fifth.

However, Lotus increased

its headcount by 250 in 2020

and opened two new

factories in Norfolk as it looks

to ramp up output. This year

it secured £120 million in

loans from investors,

including Chinese car giant

Geely, which owns 51 per cent

of the business.

ILLUSTRATION: TONY BELL

Omicron could not have been more badly timed for firms already facing new pressures

Drowning in costs as

Christmas boost fades

E

mily Roux’s phone pinged

through the night. Usually, she

would be expecting the high-

pitched noise to herald a raft of

new bookings for her Caractère

restaurant. Instead, the pings

heralded a wave of cancella-

tions as customers reacted to

warnings about the potential

spread of Omicron.

Roux — a member of the famous cater-

ing dynasty — will shut the upmarket res-

taurant she runs with her husband on

Tuesday, two days earlier than planned.

Bookings continued to be cancelled at

Caractère as consecutive daily records

were set for Covid-19 cases.

She spelt out the impact: on Wednes-

day, the 40-cover restaurant served just

18 people. “I employ 17 staff, it’s just not

viable for me,” said Roux, 30.

The instant hit to the restaurant’s

finances is only one part of the story.

Businesses such as Roux’s rely on a

bumper December to keep them going

through the traditionally quiet month of

January. Now, looking into the new year,

the prospects appear bleak.

At the end of March, some measures

that chancellor Rishi Sunak put in place

to help businesses through the pandemic

will be no more. Relief on business rates

for the retail, leisure and hospitality sec-

tors will come to an end, while VAT will go

back to its pre-pandemic 20 per cent level

from 12.5 per cent. This will all be hap-

pening just as other cost pressures

emerge, such as a 6.6 per cent rise in the

national living wage in April, and a

1.25 per cent increase in national insur-

ance contributions.

“January is going to be even more diffi-

cult than December, so we’ve only got

one month to bounce back and then in

March everything rises again,” said Roux.

It means that businesses such as hers

are braced for a tough start to 2021, just as

the public’s cautious response to Omi-

cron hammers trading. There are other

pressures too, as supply chain issues also

saddle businesses with extra costs, which

are in turn feeding through to the infla-

tionary pressures that the Bank of

England took steps last week to squash by

raising interest rates to 0.25 per cent.

That was the first increase in three

years and took rates off their historic

0.1 per cent low, which was set as the pan-

demic began to rip through the world in

March 2020.

Data last week showed that input pri-

ces — the cost of raw materials at the fac-

tory gate — rose by 14 per cent in the year

to November, while consumer prices

increased by 5.1 per cent, more than dou-

ble the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target

rate for inflation.

The Federation of Small Businesses

pointed out that the surge in business

costs would reduce profit margins at a

crucial time for many of its members,

which are also facing a raft of staff absen-

ces caused by the spread of the Omicron

variant. One employer suggested staff

shortages were becoming more of a prob-

lem than cancellations by customers.

So, as the chancellor landed back in

Britain on Friday after cutting back an

unfortunately timed business trip to Cali-

JILL

TREANOR

6 Alisher Usmanov, best

known in the UK for once

being one of Arsenal’s

biggest shareholders, was

the most generous charity

donor in this year’s Sunday

Times Rich List, having given

away £4.2 billion over the

past 20 years.

The Uzbek-born

industrialist, 68, who has

homes in Highgate and

Surrey, amassed his fortune

from mining and metals. He

owns stakes in Russia’s

largest iron ore producer and

one of the country’s biggest

cement producers, and has

gilded his wealth by

investing in cannily selected

tech platforms such as

Airbnb, Facebook, Twitter

and Spotify.

Usmanov’s philanthropy

stretches to more than 60

countries and focuses on

funding science, health,

sports and the arts. He gave

£134 million to fight Covid,

mostly in Russia, Uzbekistan

and Italy, and part-funded

the restoration of the fire-

ravaged Cutty Sark in

London, pictured.

In 2019 he bought the

original 1892 Olympic

manifesto at a Sotheby’s

auction for $8.8 million,

giving it to the Olympic

museum in Lausanne.

He sold his 30 per cent

holding in the Gunners for

about £550 million in 2018.

DONORS WITH

DEEP POCKETS

LORD SAINSBURY AND FAMILY £3.6 BILLION

Charitable giving by Britain’s wealthiest fell

20 per cent in the past decade. But Robert

Watts says the biggest givers are still generous

ALISHER USMANOV £4.2 BILLION DONATED

6 Lord (David) Sainsbury

spent 35 years at the

supermarket giant founded

by his great-grandfather in

1869, leaving in 1998 to join

Tony Blair’s government as

science minister. His

philanthropy began in

earnest at the age of 26,

when he established the

Gatsby Charitable

Foundation to channel

money to neuroscience,

education, the arts,

Africa and other

worthy causes.

He started with a £50

grant to the Liverpool School

of Tropical Medicine; in

2009, the peer became the

first British individual to have

given away more than £1

billion personally.

The 81-year-old’s wider

family is also heavily

involved in philanthropy.

His daughter Fran Perrin,

41, has set up the Indigo

Trust, which focuses on

helping the blind and

improving access to

justice for people in

Britain and in sub-

Saharan Africa.

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