Friday Five: the week's top news
Hedge fund CarVal, which shared a multibillion-pound bounty after making bets on the collapsed Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers, is among those reportedly circling PizzaExpress. Other investors to have bought into the debt-laden dining chain’s heavily discounted corporate bonds include Cyrus Capital, and distressed debt specialist HIG Bayside.
Bill's Restaurants made a £9.11m loss last year, but has returned to above market like-for-like sales growth across its estate following a major refurbishment programme. Like for like sales in the first three quarters of 2019 across the total business have been up 8.8% on 2018, with the refurbished restaurants 'significantly ahead', it says.
Jollibee is pushing forward with its regional expansion plans with the opening of a second UK site in Liverpool. Bee World UK Ltd, part of the Jollibee Foods Corporation, has submitted a planning application to open a quick service restaurant on Whitechapel in the city centre that will be the “flagship branch in the North of England”.
YO! is to trial an express format restaurant designed for customers on the go. The Japanese food business is to remove the conveyor belt from its Manchester Piccadilly station site, and convert it to an eponymous grab and go concept early next month. YO! CEO Richard Hodgson told BigHospitality there was potential for the group to become a “Japanese version of Leon”.
Husband and wife team Daniel Crump and Margriet Vandezande-Crump are to open a contemporary pub and restaurant in Beaconsfield in early December. It will be the first solo venture for the pair, who are both former Gordon Ramsay front-of-house staff.
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