A jeweller whose pieces
have been worn by model
Hailey Bieber and the
Duchess of Cambridge has
appointed advisers to hunt
for new backers after
swinging to a profit.
Monica Vinader, based
in Norfolk and London,
reported a 25 per cent rise
in sales to £57 million in
the year to July 2021. It
went from a loss of
£7 million to pre-tax profits
of £5.1 million, and has
appointed advisers from
Houlihan Lokey to explore
options. “We’ve had a bit of
interest and we decided to
appoint advisers,” said
Vinader, 53, who founded
the firm 20 years ago with
her sister Gabriela, 50.
Monica Vinader aims to
fill the gap between
expensive diamonds and
pearls and everyday
costume jewellery. Designs
include gold rings for £95
and necklaces for £150.
It has sought to drive
sales by increasing the
frequency of new “drops”
on its website, and
teaming up with social
media influencers. During
the pandemic, Vinader
noticed an “above-the-
neck effect”, with
shoppers seeking jewellery
to wear on Zoom.
“Necklaces have
outperformed,” she said.
Monica Vinader has
been backed by the private
equity firm Piper since
2016, when it led a
£20 million investment
alongside US consumer
specialist Winona Capital.
Any new investment
would provide a potential
exit for investors, with the
Vinaders continuing to run
the business.JEWELLER
POLISHED FOR
STAKE SALE
LV seeks to pacify members
after latest U-turn on merger
Mutual insurer LV wrote to its
1.1 million members this
weekend in a desperate
attempt to justify its sudden
decision to abandon merger
talks with rival Royal London
and stay independent,
despite its assertion only two
months ago that it could not
keep going on its own.
Last week, LV abandoned
talks with Royal London, a
larger mutual that had been
waiting in the wings when LV
members voted down its
£530 million takeover by
private equity firm Bain
Capital in December.
At the time of the takeover
talks with Bain, LV’s chief
executive Mark Hartigan, 58,had insisted a takeover was
the only way to save LV.
Members have asked how
that can have been the case
when it has now decided to
remain independent.
Interim chairman Seamus
Creedon is inviting members
to webinars to explain the
change of heart since the Bain
vote just nine weeks ago. In a
letter this weekend, Creedon,
70, said the Bain deal “took
place against the backdrop of
a global pandemic and
significant market
uncertainty”, and that at the
time of the vote in December,
“we fully believed the
transaction with Bain
represented the best financial
outcome for our members”.
He said improved trading“over the last 18 months”
meant the Royal London deal
was not beneficial for
members. The two mutuals
have different structures: LV
allows all its members to vote,
and not just the 271,000 with-
profits members, while Royal
London allows only its with-
profits members to vote.
This may have added to the
complexity of a merger as an
agreement would have been
needed on any payout for
LV’s non-profits members.
Creedon appeared to give
his backing to Hartigan,
saying he saw his role as
supporting the chief
executive and his leadership
team “so that they can
continue to strengthen and
grow our mutual business”.Jill TreanorRailways may crash
to £20bn shortfall
The railways face a £20 billion
shortfall in fare revenue by
the middle of this decade,
prompting calls for a radical
rethink of ticketing to get
passengers back on trains.
The £20 billion hole is
based on actual revenue lost
during the pandemic and on
proceeds that the railway
industry would have made by
2025 if Covid had not
knocked its growth off track.
The analysis, by Imperial
College London Consultants,
suggests that by 2025,
commuting journeys will still
be 1.6 per cent below pre-
pandemic levels, only slightly
offset by a 13.3 per cent rise in
leisure journeys. The reportfound that total passenger
journeys would be 4.7 per
cent higher in 2025 than
before the pandemic, but
6.6 per cent lower than they
would have been had the
railway followed its pre-Covid
growth trajectory.
The Rail Delivery Group,
which represents train
companies and
commissioned the research,
is now calling on the
government to consider
“innovative” ticketing that
would do away with the sharp
difference between peak and
off-peak fares and allow for a
more gradual “curve” of
prices throughout the day.The dash for the 9.31 could
hit the buffers, page 6Ministers are hatching a plan
to persuade SoftBank
billionaire Masayoshi Son to
list ARM in London after
Nvidia called off its $66 billion
takeover of the Cambridge
chip giant.
Jensen Huang’s US
semiconductor behemoth
walked away from a deal for
ARM last week amid
mounting regulatory scrutiny
of the controversial sale.
In response, Son said
SoftBank would seek to float
ARM in New York rather than
London, dealing a significant
blow to the government’s
plans to attract more tech
companies to the London
Stock Exchange.Ministers urge Japanese to float
chip designer ARM in London
ARM is viewed as the
crown jewel of Britain’s tech
sector, with its chip designs
being found in almost every
smartphone in the world. It
was listed on the LSE until
2016, when it was acquired by
SoftBank.
Following Son’s
comments, tech minister
Chris Philp contacted officials
at Number 10 and at the LSE
as the government began its
charm offensive to woo ARM
and SoftBank to London.
Last month, Philp led talks
at Downing Street with tech
companies, including buy-
now-pay-later giant Klarna, to
convince them of the benefits
of listing in London.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak
commissioned Lord Hill tocarry out a review of how to
make the UK a more
attractive place for tech
companies, which tend to
prefer New York. Critics of
the LSE argue that City
investors are too short term
and focused on dividends,
whereas US investors are
willing to stomach losses in
the pursuit of long-term glory
and a higher valuation.
Hermann Hauser, who
helped spin ARM out of
Acorn Computers in 1990,
said a dual listing would be a
compromise. ARM said a float
was the “logical next step” for
the company. The LSE
declined to comment.Can ARM break free?
page 5Troubled oil refining giant Stanlow could
be taken over by a private equity firm led
by a team including a key ally of Donald
Trump.
The potential bid comes amid growing
concerns about Britain’s supply of crucial
jet fuel and petrol.
Stanlow, one of the biggest refineries
in the UK, makes a sixth of Britain’s road
fuel and supplies the planes at Manches-
ter and Birmingham airports. It is owned
by the Indian billionaire Ruia brothers
and struggled financially during the
Covid crisis, delaying payment of a
£356 million tax bill.
Bartons Family Capital, a secretive
investment firm chaired by a top Credit
Suisse banker, is now weighing a bid for
Stanlow. The group is thought to have put
feelers out to the government to gauge its
appetite for a bid for the critical piece of
UK infrastructure.
Government officials have grown
increasingly concerned by the financial
backers behind some of Britain’s oil
refineries. Essar, headed by brothers
Ravi and Shashi Ruia, has come
under fire for shifting hundreds
of millions of pounds out of the
business before the onset of
the pandemic. It bought
Stanlow from Shell in 2011
for about £800 million.
Stanlow employs 900
people directly, and a further
800 contractors onsite, who
turn crude oil that arrives via
boat into diesel, petrol and jet
fuel. There are also about 70US financiers mull
bid for troubled
oil refinery giant
Essar-branded petrol stations that are not
owned by the company.
Bartons is a London-based company
run by investment banker Hugo Brassey
and chaired by David Wheeler, an Ameri-
can based in London who is a senior
adviser to Credit Suisse. Ed McMullen,
Trump’s US ambassador to Switzerland
when he was president, was described in
an article last year as a partner at Bartons.
Most of its money is from wealthy
American families, although their identi-
ties are not known. Until last month,
Wheeler was co-chairman of its Euro-
pean investment banking committee. In a
video interview in 2020, Brassey said
Bartons was focused on buying busi-Stanlow owners’ financial troubles have concerned ministers
due to its critical role supplying the country’s petrol and jet fuel
Jamie Nimmo nesses in the food and fuel industries,
saying it looked at “stressed and dis-
tressed” companies that could benefit
from operational changes.
Bartons’ interest is thought to be at an
early stage and it has not yet approached
Essar. It is not known if the Ruia brothers
are interested in selling the refinery.
Oil refineries suffered a torrid time
during the pandemic as planes were
grounded and cars left at home. Last
April, the armed forces were put on
standby amid fears that Stanlow could
collapse and leave petrol stations run-
ning dry. Essar argues that the worst is
now behind it and it is profitable again.
Essar Oil UK took advantage of the gov-
ernment’s VAT deferral scheme in 2020
to the tune of £356 million. The scheme
was introduced last year to ease pressure
on companies during the pandemic.
It was controversial because Essar had
siphoned off £518 million in dividends
from its UK arm since 2017, as well as
shifting £163 million out of the business
though a loan to Mauritius-based Essar
Oil & Gas. Essar claimed it had invested
more than $1 billion (£740 million) in the
refinery.
Essar repeatedly sought breathing
space to pay back the VAT bill, and in Sep-
tember was successful in agreeing more
time with HM Revenue & Customs. Last
month, it said it had repaid about 80 per
cent, worth £280 million, and would com-
plete the payments by the end of March. It
also said underlying profits were now run-
ning at the equivalent of $300 million a
year thanks to a rebound in fuel demand.
Essar Oil UK and Bartons declined to
comment.Ravi and
Shashi RuiaJOHN SCIULLI/WIREIMAGEMonica Vinader’s jewellery is a favourite of celebrities such as Hailey Bieber, aboveJon Yeomans Jamie NimmoSabah Meddingsalmost triple the 3.2 per cent
margins they made in 2019.
Prices at the pump, already
averaging near record levels
at 147.7p a litre for unleaded,
are set to rise further after the
price of oil surged last week.
Supermarkets have
historically made negligible
margins on fuel, using it
instead as a means of
attracting shoppers into their
stores. But industry insiders
said the billionaire Issa
brothers’ takeover of Asda,backed by private equity firm
TDR Capital, had resulted in
fuel price competition easing.
“Asda was the lead
discounter of fuel in the
country, but the Issas have
applied a different pricing
strategy and the rest of the
industry have just kind of
followed,” said Shore Capital
analyst Clive Black. An Asda
spokeswoman said it was still
the price leader on fuel.
Analysts believe that
supermarkets are using someof the extra profits from fuel
to offset huge inflationary
pressures in their food
businesses. The Sunday
Times revealed last month
that Morrisons and Asda had
raised prices on a basket of 18
grocery staples by 15.3 and
13.6 per cent, respectively, on
a year earlier. Tesco raised
prices by just 0.8 per cent.
Surging petrol prices are
adding to pressure on
households already dealing
with rising food prices andfacing an unprecedented
54 per cent jump in energy
bills from April.
Liberal Democrat leader,
and former energy secretary,
Sir Ed Davey called on
supermarkets to publicly
commit to using excess fuel
profits to lower food prices.
“Supermarkets have made
huge profits during lockdown
and are now benefiting from
soaring petrol prices.
Meanwhile, families are
cutting back to try to makeends meet,” he said. Spikes in
the price of oil typically feed
through into prices at the
pump in one or two weeks.
The RAC’s Simon Williams
said: “Prices at the pump
shouldn’t be going up,
because retailers are already
making 3p per litre more than
they should be [by historical
standards]. Supermarkets
account for roughly half of all
petrol sold in the UK, so the
margins they take make a
massive difference.”Supermarkets stand to rake in
bumper petrol profits as the
soaring price of oil threatens
to exacerbate the cost-of-
living crisis.
The grocery giants have
raised profit margins on
petrol over the past three
months, according to data
provided by the RAC.
In January, the big four
made an 8.6 per cent margin
on sales of unleaded petrol —Sam ChambersBUSINESS
&MONEY
February 13, 2022 · thesundaytimes.co.uk/business thesundaytimes.co.uk/money
THE HAT THAT
READS MINDS
PAGE 8
Asda leads grocers in pumping up petrol profits
THE WINTER
OLYMPICS
WERE MY
BIG BREAK
AIMEE FULLER
MONEY, PAGE 16MONEY, PAGE 16
THE ONLY WAY IS UP FOR THE OIL PRICE
The price of crude oil could
climb closer to $100 a
barrel this week if tensions
rise further in Ukraine. Brent
crude surged through $95
on Friday before closing at
$94.44. The price is now at
its highest level in almost
eight years.
Even before the Ukraine
crisis, Goldman Sachsanalysts had forecast that
the price of a barrel of oil
would break the $100
barrier this year, citing a
lower-than-expected hit in
demand from Omicron and
disappointing production in
Brazil and Norway.
JPMorgan has said it
could “easily” go through
$120.LARA BORO
ON THE
ECONOMIST’S
DIGITAL
FUTURE
PAGE 4
LARA BOR
ON THHE
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