Shearings to merge with rival Coach Holiday Group

Leading coach and hotel holiday operators Shearings and Coach Holiday Group (CHG) have exchanged contracts for a £200m merger that will create a serious rival to Saga in the over-55s holiday market.

If the deal is approved by the Office of Fair Trading, the merged company will be one of Europe's largest coach holiday companies for the over-55s, offering coach, air and hotel holidays to more than 170 destinations in the UK and on the Continent.

It will also become the UK's fourteenth largest hotel group and take a 14% share of the £2.1b coach holiday market in the UK.

Shearings currently owns 36 hotels aimed at the grey market while CHG (whose brands include Wallace Arnold, National Holidays and Caledonian Travel) has nine.

Their combined properties account for more than one million bednights a year.

The new group will have a fleet of 447 coaches, an annual passenger capacity of nearly one million people and a pooled database of more than 2.5 million customers.

Based on 2004 figures, it will have an annual turnover of approximately £216m and operating profits of £14m.

Venture capital company 3i, an existing shareholder in CHG, will hold a 67.8% stake in the new group after buying out Shearings' majority stakeholder Bridgepoint. Management will hold the remaining 32.2% stake.

by Angela Frewin

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