Tristar Car has been the subject of a management buy-out backed by MBO Team / Octopus Asset Management

The UK's market leading chauffeuring service to airline and corporate customers has been acquired in a £9.75m management buy-out backed by mid-market investor Octopus Private Equity.

London-based Tristar Worldwide Chauffeur Services. Tristar is one of the world's leading chauffeur companies, carrying over 400,000 passengers for 400 clients in 2007 alone. The business operates in 44 countries, with its own vehicles in the UK and a rapidly expanding service in the US. It has a blue chip customer base which includes Virgin, Emirates, BP, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.

The Business Services sector team worked closely with Tristar in 2007, including conducting a strategic review in late summer. Following the review it was agreed that management would be given an opportunity to acquire the business in an MBO, and Arrowpoint Advisory advised on securing the best possible terms. The vendors included a number of City luminaries including Jim Dale of Carphone Warehouse, Hugh Osmond and Luke Johnson. Osmond and Johnson previously acquired and floated Pizza Express in 1993, growing the business to a market capitalisation of over 500m by 1999. Osmond subsequently founded Sun Capital, a specialist provider of capital with a focus on financial services, buying Pearl Life and most recently Resolution plc in a deal worth almost 5bn. Johnson founded the private equity group Risk Capital Partners and is currently Chairman of Channel 4.

Jeremy Furniss, Managing Director at Arrowpoint Advisory, commented: “It was a pleasure to work on behalf of some of the most accomplished deal makers of their respective generations. Hard work...but a real pleasure!”

Dean de Beer, the CEO of Tristar, commented: “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to buy the business we have been successfully running and growing for the past 10 years.”

The Tristar deal marks the first deal of 2008 for both Arrowpoint Advisory and Octopus. Arrowpoint Advisory completed 38 deals in the UK in 2007 worth 1.5bn; 23 deals involved private equity houses such as Octopus, with a deal value of over 1.1bn.

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