One of the largest health food retailers in Europe, Holland & Barrett, has been sold to a company owned by the Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman in a £1.8bn deal.
The chain has a 147-year history dating back to 1870 when it was founded by William Holland and Alfred Barrett in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, says the BBC.
The company started out in clothing and groceries, but it was the sale of its food business in the 1920s that constituted Holland & Barrett in its current form. The store has changed hands several times since, culminating in a 1997 buyout by Nature's Bounty.
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Natures Bounty, or NBTY, is a producer of nutritional products that are largely sold through Holland & Barrett stores. It was bought by the private equity group Carlyle in 2010 for around $3.8bn (£3bn).
This sale is the first part of Carlyle's planned divestment of that business, with NBTY being lined up for a separate sale.
It also marks the first purchase for L1 Retail, a holding company for Fridman which sits alongside separate funds that operate in the telecoms, technology and energy sectors, says the BBC.
The company boasts a very experienced advisory group including John Walden, the former chief executive of Home Retail Group, and Karl-Heinz Holland, who was chief executive of the German discount supermarket Lidl.
Fridman is a former chief executive of BP's Russian joint venture TNK. He made his fortune when it was sold for $56bn (£44bn) to Rosneft in 2012.
Holland & Barrett is Europe's largest health food chain, says The Guardian, with 4,200 staff, 1,150 retail locations and annual revenue last year of £610m.
Image courtesy of Swipp Inc
