One of the billionaire brothers behind EG Group has urged the petrol station behemoth to sell off its $5bn (£3.7bn) US business in an apparent split with the company’s private equity backer.
Zuber Issa, who owns a 25pc stake in EG, said the company should hive off its American forecourts to a single buyer rather than pursuing a listing of the entire group as planned.
Mr Issa, along with his brother Mohsin, who also owns 25pc, built EG Group from a single station in Bury, Manchester into a major empire spanning hundreds of petrol stations.
EG is now 50pc owned by private equity group TDR Capital, which has been laying plans for a float of the business in New York.
However, in an apparent rebuke to TDR’s plans, Mr Issa has called for the separate sale of the US business rather than an outright float of the whole company.
“There are people who want to buy the US assets. It will be an auction process which would get to a clear end goal much quicker [than an IPO] and we can pay the debt off,” he told the Financial Times.
“The shareholders are still thinking about the options. Other options would be trying to sell the US in its entirety. And I think that should be an option we should do”.
Mr Issa stepped down as co-chief executive of EG last year and is now a non-executive board member, focusing on his new venture EG On the Move after buying EG’s last forecourts in the UK.
EG Group was earlier this year exploring plans to sell off some European assets in countries like France and Germany to offload debt ahead of a stock market listing.
The Blackburn-born brothers founded Euro Garages, or EG, in 2001, after acquiring a single petrol station and proceeding to buy up forecourt sites from oil giants like Esso.
In 2016, they partnered with TDR Capital and merged Euro Garages with its European Forecourt Retail Group, turning it into EG Group. The rapid expansion was fuelled by borrowing, with the return of higher interest rates forcing the group to sell off parts to bring down debt.
In an ill-fated venture, the Issa brothers bought supermarket chain Asda in an £6.8bn acquisition with TDR in 2021. Zuber has since sold his 22.5pc Asda stake to TDR, giving them majority control.
EG Group employs nearly 40,000 people across more than 5,500 sites, serving close to 1bn customers a year. Among its operations in nine countries, the US generates the most revenue.
EG Group and TDR Capital declined to comment.
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