LGV Capital backs Amber Taverns buyout
LGV Capital, the private equity firm that backed the management buyout of Channel Island-based brewer and pub operator Liberation Group in 2008, has added Amber Taverns to its list of pub investments.
The private equity group, which was involved in the original start-up of Enterprise Inns before its float in 1995, has backed a secondary management buyout of the North of England-based group for an undisclosed sum.
The Amber management team comprises Clive Preston (chairman); James Baer (joint managing director); Bryan Wardman (joint managing director); Michael Norris (finance director), and Gary Roberts (operations director).
Baer and Wardman previously ran Honeycombe Leisure, the pub management group acquired in a reverse takeover by Cains Beer Company, the Liverpool brewer headed by Sudarghara and Ajmail Dusanj.
Amber later bought 23 pubs from Cains after it went into administration in 2008.
Bill Priestley, managing director at LGV, said the death of the community pub had been "significantly exaggerated" in recent years.
"Amber Taverns is a perfect example of a business that has gone about disproving the rule that pubs can only succeed where there is a food offering," he said. Founded in 2005, Amber offered some of the best local pubs in the North of the country, he added.
Amber chairman Clive Preston said that from its start-up in 2005 Amber had eschewed food offers, preferring to be completely wet-led.
"We aren't into idyllic country pubs, rather we focus on doing wet-led, community pubs that are on a circuit and surrounded by chimney pots really well."
Preston declined to reveal how much LGV had ploughed into the business, but said the firm clearly saw a "great platform for further growth".
"LGV and Bill Priestley know the pub sector and there are great pubs coming onto the market that their owners can't make work. We believe we can."
Amber, a wholly managed pub estate, offers its pub managers an 18 per cent cut of the site's turnover.
"They are incentivised to sell," said Preston. "They don't have to worry about rent or stock. They can focus on selling the right product to customers."
Preston said there was not a loss-making pub across the group's 56-strong estate, the size of which Amber planned to double in the next few years.
"There are plenty of towns and cities where we are not represented, such as Sheffield, York and Hull, so we'll see what opportunities there are in such places," he added.
Amber's original investors were Unicorn Asset Management, Acuity Capital Management and MaxCap Partners. The LGV buyout meant they received a cash exit worth nearly three times their original investment, said Preston.
