Biggest show man in town
Anthony Lyons started his property career as a junior in a London estate agent’s office and he went on to become one of the best-known moguls around.
Every month thousands of people visit shows and exhibitions at Earls Court and Olympia. Millions more people know the names of the venues. But only a few people could name the man who owns them.
Anthony Lyons might be just 38 years old but he is now in charge of Britain’s most historic events and exhibitions company. Lyons’ firm St James Capital led the £245m acquisition of the two giant venues that make up Earls Court and Olympia in May last year.
He is a man on a mission. Just last week, he completed the £55m purchase of a second London landmark, the Chiswell Street brewery in the City, from Whitbread.
There is now talk of him adding another famous London complex, that of Alexandra Palace in north London. If he were to be successful it would give St James Capital an even tighter grip on the London’s events market.
When I meet Lyons in the staff canteen at Earls Court he is dressed in the property entrepreneur uniform: crumpled white shirt, black trousers and perma-tan. The Autumn Ideal Home Show is being set up and as head of Earls Court Lyons is driving hard to fill the centre with even more concerts, shows and exhibitions.
Lyons oozes both money and charm. He is endearingly indiscreet and tells me that he has never been to a show at Earls Court, but he takes a keen interest in what is showing at the venues. He also confesses he “never had any interest in his business”.
But Lyons is on the brink of the big time. It is unusual for property entrepreneurs to attract attention outside of their own market but Lyons is rapidly making a name for himself in wider circles. There is already talk of him being included in “rich lists”, which automatically generate the type of publicity that can only be dreamed of.
Lyons says the watershed moment for both him and St James Capital came in 2003 when the then owners of Earls Court were considering selling the properties and leasing them back.
The private owners, chief executive Andrew Morris, private equity giant Candover Investments and a group of banks led by Legal & General Ventures, wanted to make a return on their investment and were considering exiting the business completely.
Morris, whose father Sam started the Business Design Centre in Islington, had bought Earls Court from P&O in 1999 just as ExCel in London’s Docklands prepared to open.
He then watched as ExCel stole some of Earls Court’s most prestigious events, including The Boat Show.
Lyons went to see the owners and their advisers.
“Before the meeting was over, I knew this was the business I was looking for,” he said. He and the other directors of St James believed they could make money from letting redundant space at the complex, and won backing from Japanese bank Nomura’s asset finance group, which agreed to take a 25 per cent stake and provide the senior and mezzanine debt for the deal.
But the business is doing well according to Lyons, reducing the urgency to let around 200,000 square feet to third parties. Sales will be up 10 per cent this year, with turnover expected to be around £45m and EDITDA of £16.5m. The company has been putting on more corporate dinners. And Lyons reveals that Charles Dunstone’s Carphone Warehouse has just agreed to hold its Christmas party there for 6,000 people.
The largest dinner to date was for Vodafone and 11,000 staff packed out the venue. “We do 300 events here every year, that’s six a week, and there is additional business that we are bringing in,” says Lyons. “We should get 150,000 people through over three weeks for Santa Land.”
Described as “lively” and “sharp” by those that know him, there is little doubt about Lyons’ ability to pull off a deal that could catapult him to the big time — and in the process make himself and his partners a greater fortune.
Clearly Lyons is ambitious. Yet there is little in his background that hints at the path he was to take. Born in Southgate, north London, his mother Angela stayed at home to raise him and his sister, while his father Alan ran a children’s clothes shop in Enfield.
The only active part he ever played in his father’s business was to sell it for him five years ago. “I sold it for twice the book value,” he said — and his father now works for him.
After three years at Mill Hill, the public school, Lyons left full-time education at 16 and passed through a variety of jobs including work as a security guard for a clothes shop in Oxford Street.
While he was still a teenager, Lyons joined an estate agent in Palmers Green where he was little more than the tea boy. The property bug bit and Lyons began a career that has lasted 20 years.
“This was my first entry into the property world,” he explains. “Within three months I decided that I couldn’t deal with housewives and flats but wanted to get into the big world of commercial property.”
In 1984 he joined the West End commercial property consultant Richmond Conway. And after a handful of restaurant deals he was spotted by David Coffer, a Mayfair property agent. Over the next two decades Lyons rose to become one of the best leisure property agents in the capital, buying and selling hundreds of shops and restaurant premises. He became a partner in Davis Coffer and the company became Davis Coffer Lyons.
St James Capital is the private property investment vehicle set up by Coffer, Lyons and Lyons’ right-hand man Simon Conway. It bought hundreds of millions of pounds of commercial property while the directors continued to give advice to clients of Davis Coffer Lyons.
Today, Lyons has no share in Davis Coffer Lyons; the firm was sold in May exactly a year after private property company St James Capital bought Earls Court & Olympia.
Lyons’ circle of friends comprises property contacts built up over a 20-year career as a leisure agent in London’s West End.
He counts Robert Tchenguiz — the property entrepreneur expected to bid for Somerfield — as one regular acquaintance. Another is Gerald Ronson who was famously implicated in the Guinness share scandal in the 1980s.
Ronson, along with former Guinness chairman Ernest Saunders, was jailed having been found guilty in 1990, after a marathon trial, of involvement in a conspiracy to drive up the shares of Guinness during a takeover battle. Ronson, of course, prefers to be recognised as one of the country’s best-known developers.
Lyons first came into contact with him when he started dating his third daughter, and is a keen supporter of the developer’s charitable work. Ronson describes Lyons as “a very capable man” and adds that “he is smart and very likeable”.
Lyons might be running Earls Court but he has not forgotten about the property deals. One of the most bizarre rumours has been that Chelsea football club wanted to build a stadium on the Seagrave Road car park opposite Olympia. “I heard those rumours as well. I don’t know where they were coming from, but I can assure you they are nonsense,” he says.
More plausible deals include letting empty space within the Earls Court complex. Lyons says: “These things take a long time, but we have six deals in lawyers hands with interest from a health and club operator, an indoor cricket operator, a music company and a casino.”
But for now, the focus is on Chiswell Street Brewery in the City. Just last week, the deal completed on the acquisition.
It will add £10m of turnover to the group through additional events. The sales team and management is staying and is reporting to Lyons. Again, there is a property angle.
The break up value of various parts could be £30m more than the £55m St James paid for it, according to Lyons. One of the plans is to develop a 15-bed hotel on a vacant car park. “If we have got our numbers right we have done a sensational deal,” he claims.
So what next? Beside Alexandra Palace and the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, there are limited options to expand. Lyons is looking towards Europe now to acquire commercial property and is interested in buying a £460m portfolio of petrol stations in Britain, which are being sold by a joint venture between London & Regional and Rotch.
“I have done hundreds, possibly over a thousands deals in the last 20 years. I can’t think of one where I have ever lost money.”
