Inside the bitter court battle over Yodel’s future – and why it matters
An increasingly bitter legal battle has broken out between Yodel and the entrepreneur who attempted to rescue the delivery giant last year.
In the one corner is the Liverpool-headquartered company and its chief executive, Mike Hancox.
In the other is the man who led that aborted rescue deal – which ended up falling through last summer – Jacob Corlett.
Detailed legal documents have been filed with the High Court and have now entered the public domain where a raft of claims and counterclaims have been thrown out by each side over who is ultimately to blame for the deal going south.
The battle entered the media last weekend, with Yodel landing the first PR punches with stories in Bloomberg and then The Telegraph.
Those legal documents, seen by City AM, outline a very contested set of events with both parties insisting that their version are the true facts and can be evidenced if needed.
Both sides have lawyered up and are using their expensive London PR firms to get their message out in an attempt to win control of the narrative before this case sees the inside of a court room.
Below, City AM has delved into the cases of each side and explained how Yodel has got to this point and what could happen next.
But regardless of whichever party eventually emerges from this increasingly bitter row victorious, the group of people stuck in the middle with no say over the affair are the thousands of workers employed by Yodel.
With few ways to have any impact on who owns and runs the company they rely on for their livelihoods, these employees will have to watch from the sidelines as their fates are decided inside a court of law.
It’s worth stating at this point that Yodel denies everything that Corlett has claimed and Corlett denies everything Yodel has claimed.
How did this all start?
The story dates back to early 2024 when the billionaire Barclay family were trying to sell off Liverpool-headquartered Yodel before it collapsed.
Yodel, which was named the second-worst courier company in the country by Ofcom in October, works with the likes of AO World, Argos, Zara, New Look, Gousto and Ebay.
At the time, the family were facing significant financial pressures in a drawn-out saga, which also saw them lose control of The Telegraph media group.
In a bid to stay afloat, the then-owner of Yodel turned to Corlett’s consortium and sold the brand to them for just £1.
Back then, Yodel was turning over more than £550m a year, but its losses totalled over £50m, working out to £1m a week on average.
According to court documents, Yodel also had in excess of 3,000 employees and a further 5,000 self-employed or agency workers. Yodel, on its website, states it has 10,000 workers, a figure which rises to 12,000 at peak times.
At the time the deal was announced, Yodel was run by chief executive Mike Hancox, who had been in place since 2019.
Court documents state that Hancox did not own any shares in Yodel but was apparently due a bonus of more than £500,000 should a deal to sell the company be achieved.
It is also claimed in legal filings that Corlett had originally offered more than £100m for shares in Yodel but that figure was first reduced to £10m and then to just £1 “following a call from Mike Hancox, who informed him [Corlett] that measures had been taken to reduce the company’s cash at bank by pre-paying suppliers”.
It was eventually revealed months later that the former owner of Yodel owed more than £150m when it collapsed into administration.
Hancox now owns Yodel through his company Judge Logistics.
Publicly, the deal collapse was announced in August last year when Yodel revealed it had secured a £85m funding package.
The legal row hit the headlines earlier this month when a group of purported warrant-holders revealed their intention to seize control of the company.
More than 70 warrant holders served a formal demand for the shares they claim to be entitled to, which would see them owning over 70 per cent of Yodel.
It was reported in December that Yodel had been impacted by a capacity crisis over the festive period which prompted the business to ask key customers to divert business to its rivals.
What is Shift and who is Jacob Corlett?
Shift hit national headlines at the start of 2024 when its founder and chief executive, Jacob Corlett, led a consortium to take control of Yodel.
Shift was established in 2017 when Corlett was 23. After leaving school at 16, Corlett attended the Peter Jones Enterprise Academy, which was set up by the Dragons’ Den star.
Over recent years, Shift has been on an acquisition spree, snapping up a series of businesses across the country.
Its most high profile acquisition was of Tuffnells in June 2023 after the Sheffield-headquartered delivery company collapsed into administration, a move which put more than 2,000 jobs at risk.
Shift has more than 200 shareholders, including London-based Fuel Ventures, Edward Fitzalan-Howard – the 18th Duke of Norfolk – and Lord John Nash, a former minister under David Cameron and Theresa May.
Former Wimbledon champion Sir Andy Murray also holds shares through his involvement in Fuel Ventures.
What’s the case all about?
The case being brought against Corlett is about the nature of the steps he allegedly took in the lead up to the aborted merger.
Yodel is alleging that he breached his fiduciary duties as a director – something that the businessman denies, along with every other claim being made against him.
Corlett has been accused of taking vast sums of money out of Yodel as part of a raft of allegations from Hancox.
The entrepreneur has also been accused of using the attempted merger to “misappropriate” assets.
Among some of the most serious allegations that have been hurled at Corlett is that he “proceeded on a course of asset stripping” after agreeing to buy Yodel.
It’s also claimed that he raided the firm’s accounts to enrich himself and pay off debts to Shift’s suppliers.
His accusers have also said he sought to evade tax by taking money from Yodel and putting it into an offshore company of which he and his mother are the only directors.
According to court documents, the dispute is rooted in Shift’s “precarious” financial situation, which Hancox alleges Corlett did not mention during acquisition talks.
Yodel points to the liquidation of one of Shift’s main trading companies in July 2024 with a deficit of £8.5m as evidence of the financial strain on Corlett’s start-up empire.
The court papers also claim that financial pressures put Corlett’s promise to inject £22m into Yodel under threat.
It is also alleged that Corlett made a series of decisions to enrich himself, including signing Yodel up to a software deal with Shift on “manifestly uncommercial” terms.
Court documents state that this is costing Yodel up to £18m a year.
Claims have also been made that Corlett opened Yodel up to “expensive advisory fees” during a fundraising drive with a boutique investment bank.
However, the most serious allegation states that Corlett set about asset stripping Yodel “under the pretext of ‘merging’ the two businesses”.
He is accused of issuing £2.6m worth of “fictitious” invoices for fees relating to licensing fee arrangements.
Yodel has claimed that the invoices “were not for a genuine debt or liability owed by Yodel but were entirely fictitious in nature” and that they allowed Corlett “to extract money in order to confer benefits on Shift Group and himself”.
Corlett’s defence points instead to Hancox being responsible for the failed merger because of backstabbing and infighting.
According to his defence, Corlett was not involved at a micro level and had no direct involvement in any of the matters his former company alleges.
The businessman has instead counterclaimed about the payment of his outstanding consultancy fees, the value of his notice period and the value of the 10 per cent shareholding he says was promised in Judge Logistics.
What has Yodel said?
In a statement issued to City AM, a Yodel spokesperson said: “Yodel is aware of a number of groundless claims about our business being made by a former director which we refute in their entirety.
“This director’s involvement in our business was short-lived and is now the subject of significant legal proceedings instigated by Yodel.
“Last summer, Yodel went on to conclude a new ownership structure under long-standing CEO Mike Hancox which saw the business backed by a consortium of investors.
“The Yodel business continues to trade strongly in its B2B and B2C markets.”
What has Jacob Corlett said?
Speaking to City AM, Corlett said: “They’ve basically decided that they’re going to attack me personally so that I can influence parties like Shift into not getting any equity.
“That’s their whole goal, and they thought, how can we make Jacob look as bad as possible?
“Mike wouldn’t let me anywhere near the operations of Yodel. This was part of the problem.
“He controlled the company and he wanted everything to go through him. So up until the day he resigned, he never brought up any of these things as a problem.
“It’s easily provable that I don’t have anything and I’ve not achieved anything from it. I’ve not been paid in a year from any company.
“My solicitors have assured us that their claims can’t really go anywhere, that their plan is to upset me. That gives me comfort in a strange way.
“I trusted somebody who was who was meant to be on my side, who encouraged me to acquire the business in the first place? He obviously turned on me, and maybe that was his plan all along.”
What happens next?
The case could take years to reach a conclusion if a settlement between the two warring parties is not agreed upon.
However, it might be unlikely that a settlement is ever reached because of the number of different parties involved.
It’s also possible that this case might not come to court for a number of years because of the current backlog in the system.
In the meantime, Yodel insists that its ownership is secure and focused on returning the business to growth.