The stricken TGI Fridays restaurant chain is on the verge of a partial rescue, in a deal that could save thousands of jobs.
Hostmore, the company that owns rights to the brand in the UK, collapsed into administration last month after an aborted American expansion.
It has plunged the fate of the chain’s 87 sites and 3,000 employees into doubt, with administrators at Teneo brought in to recover as much money as possible for creditors.
On Sunday it emerged that the owners of an upmarket restaurant business, D&D London, were nearing a deal to buy between 50 and 55 of the fallen company’s venues.
Breal Capital and Calveton, which bought D&D last year, were hammering out a deal over the weekend and preparing to announce it as soon as Monday, Sky News reported.
Sources told the broadcaster that the sale could save as many as 2,000 of the jobs under threat.
It would include Hostmore’s existing leases and the right to the TGI Fridays brand in the UK.
An acquisition of the sites would mark a potential break from D&D London’s approach so far. Currently, most of the 30 or more restaurants owned by the company are upmarket individual eateries, rather than chain brands.
Its venues include the Bluebird in Chelsea, Coq d’Argent in St Paul’s and Skylon on Southback, among others.
On Sunday, a spokesman for D&D London declined to comment. TGI Fridays declined to comment.
Hostmore had outstanding borrowings of £35m at the end of last year. Even if all of the company’s sites are sold, bosses have said the money raised is unlikely to be sufficient to repay its debts in full. The turmoil has resulted in the business being delisted from London’s junior stock exchange just three years after its debut.
Hostmore was spun out of private equity trust Electra in November 2021. Within a year the company’s shares had shed 90pc of their value, following a series of profit warnings and as debts mounted. Many of the TGI Fridays outlets were loss-making.
The company had previously planned a £180m reverse takeover of its larger US counterpart but that deal fell apart when it emerged the target business had lost the rights to TGI Fridays royalty payments.