News blog

Clear Leisure

• BY: Andrew Hore |
• POSTED: 06/01/2014 |

Clear Leisure plans to try to unlock the value of its assets by spinning off its restaurants division. 

The first step is buying out the minority shareholder in Sosushi and appointing Michele Collini as its chief executive. A 51% stake in Lasagnette UK (www.lasagnette.com) has also been acquired and a roll out of the family restaurant concept is planned for the UK and Ireland. There are also merchandising rights to an associated cartoon character.

Clear expects to secure the rights to the name of a historic Michelin star restaurant.

At 2.1p a share, Clear is valued at £4.19m.

Clear plans to find a new chief executive to push the remaining business forward and get full value from the asset base. Current chief executive Alfredo Villa is forgoing his annual salary of £120,000. The outstanding salary of £85,000 owed for 2013 will be written off or converted into shares if a share issue happens by October 2014. Villa has also loaned €50,000 to the company.

The business activities of 73.4%-owned travel business ORH have been suspended after financial irregularities were uncovered. Clear is taking back 14.4m shares which were part of the payment for the stake.

Generali Investimenti Holding has made an offer for Clear’s stake in Mediapolis which values it at a minimum of 3p per Clear share. The offer requires the completion of the restructuring of the Mediapolis debt and local authority approval.

There are two options. The first is €20m in cash - €7m payment plus €13m settlement of Mediapolis debt. The second option is worth €30m - €13m settlement of debt plus €17m of property assets. The binding proposal expires at the end of April. 

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