I wrote a few posts about Pret’s debt (over £700 million) as well as Pret’s owners JAB Holdings having written off a third of their value. JAB injected over £200 million to lower the debt, not for the sake of lowering debt, but to raise their value again.
Private Equity WANT debt on the company. But when the company loses value, they’re in a pickle. (More about this below).
Pret even got RE-co-founder Sinclair Beecham back to help CEO Pano Christou, despite Christou being in Pret for over 20 years having started as assistant manager.
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From the Financial Times:
“The accounts for the year ended January 2 2025 also show JAB has injected a further £250mn into the company, which was used partly to repay debt as well as to increase the group’s cash on hand and unused borrowing facilities to about £100mn.”
So, Pret are down to plus/minus £500 million debt.
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In my simple language, and forgive me for such comparison, but I call Private Equity firms “pimps”. They buy companies, suck the life-blood out of them, make huge returns and then sell the company to a new Private Equity pimp to squeeze some more.
But with Pret, JAB Holdings might have bitten out more than they can chew! 😀
Someone on Twitter regarding Pret’s debt, asked how a company can be allowed to accumulate so much debt.
First of all, several things:
- Pret had debt of £700 million (or now a £500 million +/-, after JAB injected a further £200+ million).
- Pret lost a third of their value (or JAB over-estimated Pret’s value in 2018 😉 ). The debt and the loss of a third are two different things.
- It is very typical private equity (PE) to dump debt on the company they buy to maximise the largest return of their investment. (More below)
- JAB are considering either selling Pret or getting investors (IPO). My bet is they FIRST get investors as JAB lost a third of their investment, and THEN sell Pret to a new p!mp.
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Also worth mentioning that JAB entered the pet market and aggressively buy out veterinarian clinics and pet insurance to the detriment of pet welfare and pet owners’ pockets. The pet market is much more lucrative, especially since the pandemic where many people got pets during lockdowns. While the coffee market struggles due to high costs and repeated boycotts, the pet market is more safe for investment. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren is coming after JAB for that reason.
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I found a few good videos that explain in just a few minutes how PE works and why PE love to suffocate companies with debt.
But don’t let Pret off the hook, they CHOSE to sell out to PE. Pret first flirted with sales by giving McDonald’s a 33% non-executive stake to get their feet into the U.S. market. This happened under Sinclair Beecham and Julian Metcalfe, the RE-co-founders of Pret. Once in, they divorced their marriage of convenience.
Latest when Pret hooked up with McDonald’s should alarm bells have rung and a huge hint that Pret will hook up with anyone to get bigger as well as more quick cash.
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Why companies sell out to PE is obvious, the CEOs get juicy pay-outs and bonuses.
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Link (Pano Christou’s bonus and salary is now higher, the above article is from 2022)
Pret’s original founder was the late Jeffrey Hyman who opened the first shop in Hamstead in 1983. It didn’t go well and in 1986 Sinclair Beecham and Julian Metcalfe bought the name, rights, concept etc. and RE-founded Pret, but they refuse to mention and honour Hyman.
A tweet exchange between me and a friend of Hyman:
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Since Hyman now cannot be deleted off Wikipedia anymore as the editor has an eye on it, Pret just put “London 1986” on cups and shop fronts to keep brainwashing the public about their supposed original year.
In 2008 Pret then sold out to British PE firm Bridgepoint. Bridgepoint acquired a majority stake in Pret for £345 million and ten years later sold Pret to JAB Holdings for £1.5 billion.
Katchink!!!
I started in Pret in 2008 and from the get go felt it was a complex and overly strict company. People who worked before 2008 told me that since Bridgepoint’s take-over, it has become worse, even though Pret were always micromanaging.
Bridgepoint then sold Pret in 2018 to current majority owners JAB Holdings under Germany’s 2. richest family, the secretive Reimann family with an extensive Nazi slavery past. But that’s a post for another day. Important to note that JAB is based in tax haven Luxembourg and that the heirs have given up German citizenship and taken on Austrian citizenship for tax reasons. I found an amazing documentary on the Reimanns on YouTube a few weeks ago (summer 2025) but by September 2025 the video has been deleted or the account suspended.
Even the best German investigative journalists are biting their teeth out on this family. The few things that are known is that the heirs upon turning 18 years old sign(ed) a kind of non-disclosure agreement to never show their faces or do interviews.
Little fun fact, remember when former Pret CEO Clive Schlee made the announcement on Twitter to be giving all the 12,000 staff £1000 each upon JAB’s take-over? A little over £800 after tax and only for staff who worked at Pret a minimum one year. He made that announcement in the night he found out about my blog. 😀
I write about it here, The Day Clive Schlee had a Bright Idee
(No, “Idee” is NOT a typo 😉 )
Little info on Bridgepoint, Bridgepoint is now the main owner of itsu, Pret RE-co-founder Julian Metcalfe’s company. And Metcalfe made Ex-Pret CEO Clive Schlee CEO of itsu in 2024. Schlee also owns at least 10% of itsu and is also still in the background of Pret, at least the Pret Foundation and is Pret CEO Pano Christou’s mentor.
More on the four executives, Pano Christou CEO of Pret, Sinclair Beecham back in Pret, Metcalfe and Schlee, itsu:
The Arrogance of Pret & itsu Execs
I want to add that not only does PE add debt to maximise returns, but they also lower quality and chop off every- and anywhere to save costs. This shows very obviously in Pret’s loss of quality, switching to cheaper ingredients, cutting corners everywhere they can, which all results in further food poisoning and hygiene issues. More on this below.
A few videos that I find easy for a 5 year old to understand how PE works, starting with what “Goodwill Impairment” is, and over to:
Why do Private Equity Firms put debt on an Acquisition?
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Link to same account adding a few things.
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The following short explanation is super important to make sense on what’s happening to Pret:
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Private Equity explained
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And here is just PART of why Pret selling out to PE keeps hurting customers. Ongoing food poisoning reports, despite customer deaths and injuries. Customers also in other countries still end up in hospital. These are NOT updated, but complaints continue. These are taken from the website IWasPoisoned .com only, I didn’t even include Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram etc. complaints. IWasPoisoned is being updated constantly as customers leave reports there.
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I worked at Pret A Manger and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee. Schlee has been appointed CEO of itsu in 2024 by Julian Metcalfe who gave him the CEO spot at Pret many years ago.
I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather speak out to help others. For an overview of important blog entries of my experience with Pret, please visit “My Ordeal with Pret A Manger”. The little arrow to the right next to each heading will lead directly to the post.
An incomplete list on what other Pret staff say about Pret’s bullying environment: Caught in the Act Bullying at Pret and What shop MANAGERS & HQ staff say about Pret incl. CEO Pano Christou.
I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote two articles in the Scottish Left Review as well as mentioned by the BBC.
Please also see the MEDIA page for more on my work with the press.
NEW LinkTree
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Thank you for reading/listening.
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Interview:
(Please be aware that the player shows 0:00 but just press play)
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Bullied during bereavement in Pret A Manger 