Byron sold out of administration for £4m

Byron was sold out of administration for £4m in a prepack sale, which will see two London sites reopen tomorrow (Thursday 27 August).

Will Wright and Steve Absolom of KPMG, who were appointed joint administrators on 31 July, completed the sale of the business together with certain assets of the company now known as Famously Proper. The sale excluded the leaseholds of 31 restaurants and the head office.

The executive summary of the proposals filed to Companies House states: “This was, in our opinion, the best course of action to maximise the returns for the general body of creditors as a whole.”

As part of the transaction, licences to occupy 20 of the 51 restaurant sites were granted by the purchaser for one month. Of the 31 sites which remain closed, 30 have been offered for surrender and one has been retained in order to establish whether a lease premium would benefit the company.

Sites whose leases have been retained and will continue trading include the York, Oxford, Southampton and Milton Keynes restaurants. London sites in Waterloo and Old Brompton Road will reopen tomorrow.

As part of the administration process a total of 635 restaurant employees and 16 head office staff were made redundant.

In 2018 Byron embarked on an “18-month turnaround plan” led by Byron’s chief executive Simon Wilkinson. The company was founded in 2007 by The Gondola Group, which sold it in 2013 for a sum of £100m to private equity firm Hutton Collins.

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