£1bn sale on Pizza Express menu | The Sunday Times

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£1bn sale on Pizza Express menu

Buyout giant plots exit from restaurant empire that also owns Zizzi and Ask

Ben Marlow and Matthew Goodman Published: 27 October 2013

Pizza Express is one of Gondola Holdings’s most successful enterprises Pizza Express is one of Gondola Holdings’s most successful enterprises (Sophie Laslett)

THE owner of the restaurant empire behind Pizza Express is finalising plans for a £1bn sale or float.

The private equity backer of Gondola Holdings, which also owns the Zizzi and Ask restaurant chains, are expected to appoint an investment bank in the coming weeks to draw up exit plans. The move follows Gondola’s sale of the Byron burger chain for £100m this month.

It is understood Cinven, which has owned the business since 2006, favours a sale or break-up of the company next year over a stock market listing.

Gondola, which employs more than 15,000 people and has 750 restaurants, has been publicly owned twice before. It made its stock market debut when the entrepreneurs Luke Johnson and Hugh Osmond reversed Pizza Express into a shell company called Star Computer Group in 1993.

Ten years later it was taken private. It was relisted in 2005, having acquired Ask and

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