Interflora florists land a windfall after American buyout

Mon, 24 Jul 2006

FTD, the American flower giant who owns the Interflora brand in the USA is on the brink of securing a deal for interflora UK for £65.7m.

Approximately 400 interflora florists will be entitled to a windfall of about £36,000 after 3i, the majority shareholders agreed to the sale.

Unfortunately many other interflora members do not qualify for the windfall.

The organisation was previously a mutual one but was demutualised. Since then the private equity group took its stake in February 2005, whose value has tripled thereafter.

Those who will gain significantly from the deal are the four company directors, who are led by chief executive Steve Richards who invested £200,000 for a 15 per cent stake in the company. The directors will earn a share of approximately £8m.

The reason for the high return according to 3i is due to a tripling of operating profits under its ownership.

One unhappy Interflora member said, "That may be true, but my volumes have gone down. Any profit has been generated from cost-cutting at headquarters."

The majority of the 1,850 members who chose to accept a windfall of £12,000 18 months ago will not benefit from the new deal.

However the 400 members who decided to accept shares rather than the cash can stand to make £36,000.
add to favouritesnewsletterlink to this pagesend to friendpost comments

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.