The Barclay family’s Very Group has been dealt a fresh blow with the departure of its chief executive after less than two years in the role.
Lionel Desclée, 44, a former Walmart boss who joined Very in September 2022, was stepping down to “pursue new opportunities”, the company said.
His exit comes two months after that of Dirk Van den Berghe, 60, who left two years into his tenure as chairman, and a month after Deloitte resigned as the company’s auditor.
Very’s leadership upheaval comes as the Barclay family retreat from a range of operations within their debt-laden business empire. They are set to lose control of their media assets with the expected auction of The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator, and in February they sold Yodel, the parcel delivery company.
Desclée is to be succeeded by Robbie Feather, 56, who is being promoted from the role of retail managing director, having joined Very in 2021. Feather formerly was the chief executive of Fenwick, the department stores chain, and before that worked in various roles for Sainsbury’s Argos.
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Very is an online retailer formed by the Barclays after their acquisitions of the Littlewoods catalogue business and the home shopping division of Great Universal Stores. It offers “buy now, pay later” finance on its ranges of clothing, home and beauty products and is a key pillar of the Barclays’ remaining corporate assets.
Desclée’s appointment as group chief executive had reunited him with Van den Berghe, a fellow Belgian, who joined as chairman at the start of 2022. The pair previously worked together at both Walmart and Ahold Delhaize, a Dutch food retailer.
At the time, the Barclay family was said to have been gearing up for an expected stock market float that would have valued the business at £2 billion. Van den Berghe announced his departure in February this year. Nadhim Zahawi, 56, the former chancellor, was reported to have been among the candidates to replace him.
Deloitte said it was resigning as auditor last month, ending an 11-year relationship, after encountering “difficulties with respect to the availability of and access to appropriate and relevant information”.
The fashion and home retailer’s structure is complex and is spread across a web of various businesses whose ultimate parent is based offshore. Deloitte said some of these businesses were “either not audited by the same audit firm or are unaudited”. While it said that it had resolved the difficulties, “we have concluded that we wish to resign as auditors”.
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At the time, Very said that “all the necessary information was provided by those other group companies … and accounts were filed on time and with an unmodified audit opinion”. It said it would appoint a new auditor in due course.
The Liverpool-based company reported profit before tax of £4.6 million in the year to July 1, down 92 per cent on the year before, which it attributed to a “heightened cost of funding”. The business’s financing costs have risen by 43.5 per cent amid the increases in the Bank of England’s base interest rate.
The Very Group’s debt is comprised of bonds, credit facilities and securitised loans totalling more than £2 billion. The group has bonds worth £575 million, revolving credit facilities totalling £150 million and has agreed a new debt funding package with Carlyle, the American private equity firm, and International Media Investments, the Abu Dhabi-based group, worth £125 million.
IMI was brought into the Very Group’s debt structure as part of a separate deal designed to help the Abu Dhabi investor to gain control of the Telegraph newspaper titles. The Telegraph transaction has been blocked by ministers, leaving IMI in control of debt tied to both the media group and the Barclay family’s separate commercial operations.
Desclée said he would leave the business with “amazing experiences and a much better grasp of the Liverpool accent”.
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Aidan Barclay, 68, Very’s acting chairman, praised Desclée for his “strong, customer-focused leadership”. He added that Feather was the “perfect person to lead the next stage of the Very Group’s development”, adding that he had “proven to be an outstanding retail leader, both at The Very Group and throughout his career. He understands our business intimately and has a strong track record of transformation and growth.”
