Who are the men behind the Dobbies deal?
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For months Wyevale Garden Centres were the front-runners in the race to buy Dobbies from Tesco but they were finally pipped at the post on Friday by an investor group led by Midlothian Capital Partners and Hattington Capital in a deal worth £217 million. So who are the men behind this dramatic turn of events? GTN Xtra takes a look into the backgrounds of the deal makers...
 Barney Burgess, of Hattington Capital, is well known to Tesco. He was previously Commercial Director at Tesco in the UK, responsible for a portfolio of food categories with annual sales of £5bn and prior to that spent 5 years running Tesco.com, Tesco’s grocery home shopping business.
In that capacity, Barney led the business to double-digit annual sales growth and improved profitability. Tesco.com has annual sales over £2bn, over 3,000 delivery vans, and one of the busiest websites in the UK.
Barney led the creation of the ‘click and collect’ service for groceries in the UK as well as building Tesco’s portfolio of automated picking facilities to serve the London market.
Barney was also a member of Tesco’s Corporate Responsibility Committee and initially as Business Development Director, led public and private M&A transactions.
Before joining Tesco, Barney spent 6 years working for McKinsey & Co management consultants, ultimately as an Associate Principal, with experience in both retail and others industries. He worked on operational, organizational, strategic and transaction-related engagements.
Barney also co-founded and was Development Director for Acturis, a company providing Internet-based back-office software for insurance brokers. Acturis now employs over 200 people and has over 10,000 users of its software.
Barney has an MBA from Insead, as well as MEng and MA degrees in Manufacturing Engineering from Cambridge University.
In yesterdays Guardian they reported that Barney will work on expanding Dobbies online platform.
 Andrew Bracey is a Partner at Midlothian Capital Partners. Prior to founding MCP Andrew had a 24-year career in corporate finance, private equity and public companies.
Most recently, Andrew was Chief Financial Officer of Michael Page PLC. Prior to this, he was CFO at Ocado Group PLC, helping the company through its IPO in 2010. Before joining Ocado, Andrew was head of Barclays Capital PIA, where he led a number of transactions, including Somerfield and Alliance Boots.
Prior to this, Andrew held senior banking positions at UBS and Credit Suisse, where he focused on retail M&A.
According to the Aberdeen Press and Journal Midlothian Capital Partners is run out of offices in London and Connecticut in the US and was set up last year specifically for the purpose of acquiring Dobbies.As well as Andrew Bracey there are two other directors: Connecticut-based retail specialist Neil Currie and Royal Bank of Scotland corporate development director Aidan Clegg, who has previously held senior management roles at UBS, BNP, Nomura International and BNP Paribas. Mr Clegg said on Friday that the successful deal for Dobbies was 18 months in the making and involved mainly UK-based “wealthy families”.
An approach last year was rebuffed, he added.
Andrew Bracey has been quoted in other national press as saying "Dobbies is a truly iconic Scottish business." GTN Xtra believes there are more people behind this Dobbies deal, some of which are closely connected to the garden industry. We'll keep you posted when we find out more.
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