Bensons for Beds, with its 70-year heritage, and Harveys, founded in 1966, positioned itself as a leading vertically integrated bed and furniture retailer in the UK with its nationally recognised brands. The associated group of manufacturing companies had extensive expertise within bedding and upholstery and was the market leader in the production of high-quality mattresses, divan sets and furniture.
The Group was acquired by Steinhoff in 2005 and sold to Alteri Investors in September 2019.
The Group was operating in breach of a covenant in a £40m secured term loan with Alteri Investors and faced a deteriorating cash position, in the context of an emerging global pandemic that closed stores.
BDO’s Special Situations M&A Team was introduced by PwC to explore a sale of both businesses and manufacturing operations on behalf of the Group and its shareholder. BDO ran an accelerated sales process and marketed the opportunity to a wide range of potential investors from both trade and financial investor communities.
The BDO sales process concluded with a pre-packaged sale to Alteri Investors and was completed out of administration for certain business and assets of the Group. The sale put the ongoing business on a firmer financial footing in its restructured form as a Bensons for Beds-only model, preserving 1,899 jobs.