Guy Hands is among the financiers attempting to shop for Butlin’s, Britain’s best-acknowledged chain of vacation camps.
Mr Hands’ Terra Firma Capital Partners is a few of the handful of bidders competing to buy Butlin’s from Bourne Leisure.
Terra Firma, which has been in large part recast as the Hands family’s personal funding vehicle, is said to have tabled a proposal for the three vacation hotels, although it turned into unclear on Monday how serious his hobby is.
Mr Hands’ involvement inside the auction pitches him against a quartet of private equity and real property buyers, at the same time as the cost-of-residing disaster threatens to effect the valuations of groups uncovered to UK customer spending.
Sources said Terra Firma was bidding against Queensgate, Bain Capital, Epiris and TDR Capital for Butlin’s, whose emblem changed into created by way of its eponymous founder, Billy Butlin, in 1936.
Bourne Leisure, which additionally trades below the Haven and Warner Leisure Hotels brands, determined in conjunction with owner Blackstone to place Butlin’s up for sale ultimate 12 months after concluding that it did now not match with the relaxation of the institution.
According to the logo’s legit records, Mr Butlin “felt sorry for families staying in drab visitor-houses with not anything a great deal to do” all through a ride to Barry Island.
In its heyday, Butlin’s operated from nine web sites across the United Kingdom, exciting one million holidaymakers every 12 months with knobbly knees competitions and glamorous granny contests.
The logo became such an entrenched a part of Britain’s popular consciousness that it furnished the muse for Hi-de-Hi!, the lengthy-jogging BBC sitcom.
Its fortunes waned with the explosive increase of opportunities for Britons to vacation overseas, however has enjoyed a resurgence as the pandemic has fuelled a growth in staycations.
Butlin’s other web sites nowadays are at Minehead in Somerset and Bognor Regis, the conventional seashore metropolis near the South Downs National Park.
Mr Hands’ hobby in shopping for Butlin’s follows a busy period of deal hobby concerning the company he founded.
The financier were hatching plans to offload Annington Homes, the Ministry of Defence-occupied housing portfolio, but has been plunged into a prison row with the government approximately its destiny.
He now no longer invests from a preferred fund however increases capital on a deal-by-deal basis to buy corporations.
Last year, Mr Hands offered Kier Living, which he has rebranded as Tilia, and has due to the fact that received Hopkins Homes, East Anglia’s biggest personal housebuilder.
His efforts to elevate a new buyout fund faltered inside the wake of the EMI debacle, where he unsuccessfully attempted to sue Citi, the financial institution advising on the deal.
Despite his big wealth, he informed The Daily Telegraph in a current interview that he had discovered happiness an elusive commodity and stated he had in element been pushed with the aid of a need “to be general”.
Rothschild, the funding financial institution, is jogging the sale of Butlin’s.
Terra Firma and Blackstone, Bourne Leisure’s controlling shareholder, declined to comment.
