Former Addison Lee boss tables £125million bail out offer for troubled firm

A former boss of minicab firm Addison Lee is mulling over a rescue offer to bail out the troubled private hire operator.

Liam Griffin, son of founder John Griffin, resigned as CEO at Addison Lee in 2015. Liam Griffin does however still hold the position of vice-chairman at the British firm. According to Sky News sources, Liam Griffin has put in a provisional £125m offer for the transport company.

That offer, if accepted, would leave its current lenders heavily out pocket. Addison Lee was sold to private equity firm Carlyle back in 2013 for £300m.

Selling at the cut price of £125m would represent a loss of £230m in outstanding debts, with much of that due to be repaid in April 2020.

Addison Lee operates the second largest private hire service in London after Uber. The firm’s 5,000 cars are said to complete about 25,000 jobs a day, bringing it about 10% of the £3 billion London taxi and private hire market.

At the start of the year Addison Lee announced it would invest in 1,200 Volkswagen Sharans to create a fleet that is compliant with Transport for London’s new Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), which came into force earlier this year on 8 April.

In May, the London based private hire firm reported losses for last year totalling £39m. That comes after losses in the year before of £20.8m, as they desperately attempt to compete with ride-sharing giants Uber.