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Baile to secure Oddbins sites by next week

Published:  05 May, 2011

Simon Baile will have secured between five and seven Oddbins stores by the end of next week, but "regrettably" not the Oddbins name, according to his financial backers.

Simon Baile will have secured between five and seven Oddbins stores by the end of next week, but "regrettably" not the Oddbins name, according to his financial backers.


An earlier bid by Baile and private equity backers for around 40 stores was turned down by administrators last month.

But a spokesman for backer Gordon Brothers Europe told Harpers Wine & Spirit the firm was "hugely frustrated" by the length of time it was taking adminstrators Deloitte to sign off on the deal.


"We are keen to support Simon Baile to rescue as much as was viable of the estate," the spokesman said, adding that a price for between five and seven stores, mostly in and around London, had been reached with administrators. He said he expected the final deal would not be completed until next week.


"What's proving to be hugely frustrating is dealing with the administrators. We started negotiations in the first week of April and it's now the beginning of May and they're still faffing around."


The spokesman confirmed that Baile has not been successful in acquiring the Oddbins brand name. "Simon's regret and ours is that it will probably cease to exist as a brand name."


The spokesman said he would be interested to see if administrators managed to achieve a bigger sum for the estate than Baile had offered initially.


He added: "I don't think the adminstrators have covered themselves in glory, but we have no factual information to back that up as yet."


Deloitte administrator Lee Manning said suggestions it was dragging its feet were unfounded. "I'd like to point out that we've had stores and stocks available all the time and we're waiting for Simon Baile. Something's got lost in the translation. It has taken longer than ideally we would have hoped, but we expect the deal to be concluded very shortly."

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