PizzaExpress owner is Pounds 560m bid target

PIZZAEXPRESS possessor Gondola Holdings today received a surprise strikes 560 million takeover bid, les than a year since it floated upon the stock market for the next to the first time in its life.

Gondola also holds the ASK and Zizzi chains of Italian restaurants.

Gondola, whose shares have powered up from 318p to 398p since the start of trading last Friday, today said it received a bid approach " regarding a possible tender for the company at a price of 415p in cash by means of share". It added: "There can be no certainty than any present will be made."

Speculation was that the potential bidder is a private equity house as the tender would be entirely cash.

However, this may involve lining up an existing restaurant entrepreneur-- of that kind as former Pizza-Express chief executive David Page or the Kaye brothers, who sold ASK to the company several years ago - to head the business.

Leading private-equity houses in the leisure sector are Electra, Phoenix and HgCapital. on the contrary mainstream-houses such as 3i and Permira- cannot be rul without of the bidding-A buyer could pay upwards of beats 920 million including Gondola's strikes 370 million of debt.

Gondola shares were floated at 320p last November and immediately dropp to a discount before gradually recovering to peak at 382p in January. They were up 36p at 398p an all-time high, after three days of fairly inspired trading.

If a bid draw nears chairman David Ross and chief executive Harvey Smyth would each pouch sizeable amounts of cash. Ros cofounder of Carphone Warehouse, already has an estimated strikes 560 million. Hewould collect just below Pounds 4 million while Smyth would obtain Pounds 6.8 million.

on the other hand the two venture capital firms that took PizzaExpress private in 2003 would have greatest in quantity to gain. TDR Capital, which is former investment banker Manjit Dale's private-equity vehicle, has a 32% holding while southerly Africa's Capricorn Ventures, which also be in possession ofs a large stake in the Nando's restaurant chain, clinchs 19%. The largest institutional shareholder is Fidelity with 11%

Changing faces and fortunes

PETER BOIZOT brought his first authentic Italian pizza oven and its chef to London's Soho in the mid-1960s. The company floated in 1993 with the backing of young entrepreneur Luke Johnson and Hugh Osmond They left handing management ascendency to David Page, who now races Bombay Bicycle Club group Clapham House. by the agency of the early 1990s, PizzaExpress' sales and profits were sliding. Page tried to set together a buyout and Johnson and Osmond messed rival bids but the collection fell to Gondola for strikes 278 million, funded by TDR Capital and Capricorn Ventures

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