Gerald Ronson, the veteran tycoon best known for being one of the "Guinness Four", is to return to the petrol station forecourt with a deal to snap up more than 500 sites for £110m.
Rontec Investments – a consortium comprising Ronson's forecourt retailer Snax 24, investment bank Investec and private equity group Grovepoint – will acquire the retail business of fuel group Total in a move that represents the 72-year-old entrepreneur's latest comeback.
The deal will see Rontec buy 810 service stations from Total for about £350m, while simultaneously selling 254 of them to Shell for £240m. Under the terms of the agreement, Snax 24, which previously ran only 84 sites, will operate the 556 Rontec sites and, temporarily, the Shell sites.
In a statement, Ronson said: "This transaction marks Snax 24's return to the fuel business in scale. We are delighted to be acquiring this already well-run business and believe that our independence will enable us to create further opportunities and drive innovation."
Shell's entry into the deal is viewed by some industry watchers as a tactic to allow the consortium to hold back some financial firepower for future deals. While Snax 24 has been rather low key, Rontec has also been identified as a frontrunner to buy Murco UK, Murphy Oil's network of 475 petrol stations, which is expected to be sold for around £150m.
Ronson is one of the grandaddies of forecourt retailing having developed 968 petrol stations in the UK over 45 years. He claims to have pioneered concepts such as self-service sites, canopies and forecourt shops.
In early 1992, Snax 24's predecessor company, Heron Service Stations, had more than 200 sites and a 2% share of British fuel sales, before Ronson sold 150 sites to Elf.
The 556 Rontec sites that Snax 24 will run represent around 5% of the UK retail fuel network.
Rontec has also bought Total's Butler heating oil business, the associated logistics infrastructure, as well as its Channel Islands and Isle of Man businesses.
While the birth of Rontec marks Ronson's return as a significant operator in the forecourt market, he has been a well-known figure in the property world for many years.
His recently finished 46-storey Heron Tower is the tallest building in the City of London.
US law firm McDermott Will & Emery has already moved in and occupies two floors, with an option on another. Serviced office group Landmark has taken three floors.
Despite the successes, however, Ronson will be forever associated with one of the best-known stock market scandals ever to occur in Britain.
The Guinness affair of the 1980s saw four men accused of acting to inflate the price of Guinness shares in order to make possible a takeover bid for rival drinks company Distillers. Ronson, Ernest Saunders, Jack Lyons and Anthony Parnes were all convicted.
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