Page 320 - James Caan - The Real Deal
P. 320

The Real Deal



             a day, I can do so much from home or wherever else I happen to
             be. And that means when I’m in the office the important thing is
             spending time with the team, maintaining the rapport and the
             spirit of the place so that we continue to excel. Paperwork and
             meetings can be done remotely, and that means I get to enjoy being
             in the Hamilton Bradshaw offices and hanging out with the team.
                So far, only one of our investments has lost money, and that was
             a pretty high-profile flop. We got a phone call from a firm of
             accountants that was handling the administration of Benjy’s, a
             high-street sandwich retailer. If Pret A Manger and Eat cater for
             the sandwich connoisseur, Benjy’s was for the bloke who wants a
             cheap sandwich at lunchtime and doesn’t want his taste buds
             educated – cheese and pickle, ham and tomato, BLT. It had
             originally been set up by the Benjamin family and they had
             sold up to another private equity firm three years earlier for
             £25 million. At the time of the sale it had annual profits of £2.8
             million; three years later it was making an annual loss of £4
             million.
                ‘They’re going to run out of cash on Friday,’ the accountants
             told us. It was now Monday. If they couldn’t find an investor, the
             company would be wound up and its entire workforce laid off.
             ‘Would you be interested in buying it?’
                It sounded like an interesting investment. It was a well-known
             brand, it had good locations, and, because I knew there wouldn’t
             be many other people who could raise the cash in a week, I could
             also get it for a good price. So I went to meet the management
             team that the private equity firm had installed, and within ten
             minutes I thought I had spotted the problem. The MD wore an
             Armani suit and looked as if he’d had an expensive education. He
             gave me a very polished presentation on the business and, as I was
             sitting there, I couldn’t help but notice the divide between the
             management’s style and the brand. The two didn’t marry. He
             should have been running Pret, because ideally there should be




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