Bank Restaurant Group has published details of its planned £32m acquisition of the Individual Restaurant Company (IRC).

The deal, a reverse takeover, will see IRC take control of the enlarged Bank group. Bank is expected to be renamed as IRC at a later date.

The deal is referred to as a "reverse takeover" because Bank is publicly quoted, while IRC, owner of the Piccolino chain, is privately owned.

Bank is to pay £14.47m in a mixture of cash and shares for the business and will assume £17.8m of IRC debt. Funding comes from a share placing by Altium at 105p per ordinary share.

An additional payment of £8.5m is payable subject to the future performance of certain IRC sites.

IRC chief executive Steven Walker will head up the newly enlarged business - which will have 23 restaurants in the UK - with Vernon Lord, currently IRC's managing director, becoming finance director.

Ian Donald, operations director at IRC, will continue in his role at the enlarged business, as will Bank's Robert Breare, who will assume the position of non executive on completion of the deal.

Breare said: “This acquisition represents the ‘acquisition of scale’ which we have been striving to achieve over the past months pursuant to our publicly stated strategy.”

Future plans for the business will see at least six Piccolinos, of which there are currently 12, opened a year.

It is also likely that Bank's Zinc chain will be assimilated into IRC's The Restaurant Bar & Grill brand, which currently trades from four units.

Reverse takeover deal sees IRC take control of Bank

Bank Restaurant Group poised to sell to Piccolino owner

By Chris Druce

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