HSBC appoints Rothschild bankers to sell Barclay family's ArrowXL
Rothschild has been appointed to find a buyer for ArrowXL to deliver a payout for HSBC after it pushed the delivery group's parent company into administration last year.
ArrowXL is one of two logistics operations built up by the Barclay family as part of a corporate empire spanning hospitality, retail and media.
The group is run through a solvent operating company and it will be sold to help to pay back debt of £143.5 million owed to HSBC, the largest secured creditor of its insolvent parent company, Logistics Group Limited.
HSBC appointed administrators to take control of Logistics Group as the Barclay family was being chased by lenders across its portfolio of corporate assets.
Lloyds Bank seized The Telegraph and The Spectator and put the media outlets up for sale in summer 2023.
Yodel, the other logistics outfit seized from the Barclay family, has been sold to InPost, a Polish delivery group. InPost owns a network of thousands of lockers and drop-off points for parcels across Europe and it runs a home delivery service. The group was founded by Rafal Brzoska, a Polish billionaire, who said the deal would help with his company's expansion in the UK.
Lloyds had been pursuing the Barclay empire for many years to secure repayment of lending totalling £1.2 billion. The Barclay family was able to satisfy the repayment in full by refinancing the debt with funding from Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan.
Sheikh Mansour had been hoping to convert the debt secured against The Telegraph and The Spectator into equity to take control of some of the most prized media publications in the UK.
The transaction ran aground when ministers blocked the deal over concerns of the sheikh's status as a leading politician in the Middle East. He is a prominent businessman and also the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, a country that has faced criticism for its poor record on press freedoms.
Rothschild declined to comment. HSBC did not respond to a request for comment.
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