Sunseeker business sale delivers massive profits for investors

Investors in Sunseeker International has enjoyed a massive windfall from the sale of the luxury yacht business.

Bus tycoon Sir Brian Souter pocketed more than £100 million in profits on his investments in recent months, largely thanks to the sale of a 92 per cent stake in Sunseeker to Chinese billionaire, Wang Jianlin. Sir Brian isn't the only one to benefit from the business sale. Golf ace Rory McIlroy and Australian business, Macquiarie Bank, are among the others to benefit for the sale.

Those who profited were members of a consortium which bought a majority share in Sunseekers back in 2010. The business was in some difficulty back then and the group only paid £25 million, so the sale of the stake for £390 million represents a massive profit for investors and a hugely successful business turnaround.

Wang bought the stake through Beijing-based Dalian Wanda Group, which he controls. Wang commented: “With the committed support of Wanda, Sunseeker is well placed to take full advantage of opportunities in China, one of the world's fastest-growing luxury yacht markets.”

Before the consortium - led by Dublin-based private equity group FL Partners - bought the majority stake in 2010, the company had recorded a pre-tax loss of £9.1 million in the year to July 2009, compared with a pre-tax profit of £17.8 million in the previous year. The tight economic climate in the wake of the financial crash had a small impact in the drop in earnings but an unexpected bill of £6.1 billion to bail out a distributor pushed the company into serious liquidity problems.

The new owners managed to turn the business around, particularly because, as Sunseeker's Crowley noted, the company's troubles were only skin-deep: “What attracted us [to Sunseeker] was that right through the recession, Robert kept on investing, almost to his detriment in the end, and revenues never took a real hit as a consequence.

“The company wasn't immune but the problems weren't about the core business. He just ran into liquidity issues. The only thing that was missing was financial stability.”

The business has overcome the cashflow problems and grown enormously since it changed hands. Its dependency on high net worth individuals has meant that the downturn in global spending that has affected many businesses has hardly made a dent on its customers' finances – prices for yachts start at around half a million and the latest models cost around £20 million – a dip in the markets is not going to be a problem for people with this kind of cash.

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