The owner of the restaurant group which includes the Wolseley in London has been granted a reprieve after fending off a High Court challenge from its majority shareholder over a proposed £38million bailout.
Corbin & King has been embroiled in a bitter legal battle with its major shareholder Minor International over the company’s insolvency.
Minor forced Corbin & King into administration last month after applying for a loan and tried to block the restaurant group’s efforts to find a new creditor. Minor has been his biggest creditor so far.
In a ruling yesterday, Judge Foxton said he was ‘not persuaded’ to grant Minor the injunction blocking a refund.
Corbin & King co-founder Jeremy King is working with US fund Knighthead to try to regain control of the group, which also owns The Delaunay and Brasserie Zedel. The US fund has offered to repay the £34m in loans owed to Minor, which Minor will now have to accept.
This is the latest twist in a battle between Mr. King and Minor over the future of the business.
Minor lashed out at the court’s decision, saying it “doesn’t solve anything”.
Marion Walsh-Hédouin, Vice President of Minor Hotels Group, said: “This is clearly not in the interest of the wider business – it does nothing more than kick the box by replacing one secured creditor with one directly aligned with Mr. King and offers no demonstrable improvement to the company’s current dire situation.
She said the judgment had placed Corbin & King in a ‘very complex situation which serves no one’s best interests’, and leveled new accusations against Mr King that he had shown a ‘disposition to engage in lawful behavior questionable to achieve his ends”.
Judge Foxton is expected to deliver his decision in full today. However, this should mean that Minor will no longer be able to put individual Corbin & King restaurants into administration. Only the holding company was placed under supervision.
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Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
This notice was published: 2022-02-16 09:00:00
