Private equity sometimes gets “a bad rap” and generally makes its returns by growing businesses rather than via “financial engineering”, opined Andrew Higginson, then chair of the supermarket chain Morrisons, when his board agreed to sell to the buyout firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice for £7bn in 2021. Really?
Three years on, there is no sign of growth – in the sense of gains in market share – at either Morrisons or Asda, the other big buyout deal of 2021 (by TDR Capital and the Issa brothers, Mohsin and Zuber). In September 2021 Morrisons represented 9.8% of the UK grocery market, on the research group Kantar’s numbers; last month it had 8.6%.
