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Corbin and King restaurants co-founder Jeremy King has responded to Minor International placing the company into administration. The head of the restaurant group, which includes central London favourites the Wolseley, Brasserie Zedel, and the Delaunay, says that the group is “under siege,” but that on the floors and in the kitchens, it is “business as usual.”
King converged with Minor on that point: in its statement announcing the administration, it too emphasised that the “restaurants continue to trade.” But overall, he returned to the “fundamental difference of opinion” on how restaurants are run, and expansion plans for the group’s restaurants, which has marked a remarkably fractious and rapid decline in relations between Corbin and King and its majority investor. King reaffirmed his plan to “buy back the holding company out of administration, pay back all the monies, and get back to what we do best.”
King confirmed what Minor implied when pressed for comment on the nature of the administration — that the “financial obligations” Corbin and King failed to meet are solely the £38 million loan Minor provided in March 2020. King said that the loan was was “part of the transaction that saw Minor buy into the company, and [they] told us then that they would be refinancing it.” Minor bought its stake in Corbin and King in 2017.
In its statement announcing the administration, Minor chief executive Dillip Rajakarier also said that “After all our offers to put the company on a strong financial standing have been rejected by Mr King, we have had no choice but to take the responsible step and put Corbin & King Limited into administration.” King responded to this claim by saying that said offers had been conditional upon “the best interests only of themselves [Minor.] The truth is that Minor haven’t put a penny into the restaurants since buying the business.”
He went on to say that the difference of opinion with Minor extended to “what is the best interests of our customers, staff, landlords and suppliers. I will never change my principles to the detriment of those elements for a successful restaurant.”
More soon.