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A travel agent that arranges the itineraries for the likes of Jay-Z, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Foo Fighters and Depeche Mode is going under the hammer for about £100 million.
The private equity owner of The Appointment Group (TAG) has hired investment bankers from Rothschild to sell the business, according to City sources.
TAG specialises in booking flights, hotels and other travel arrangements for pop groups, comedians, celebrities and their entourages.
The company was founded by friends John Gianquitto, 64, and Maurice Veronique, 62, in 1988. Veronique was working as a finance director with Simon Cowell at the time. Gianquitto, who remains president of the company, was general manager at a travel agency that looked after the likes of Genesis, U2 and Lionel Richie.
Veronique and Gianquitto decided to go it alone and secured a bank loan to buy a Sheffield-based travel agency, moved the business to London and hired three members of staff.
“We opened on September 1, 1988 – a couple of fresh-faced, young, eager guys – and set about conquering the world,” Veronique said during an interview ten years ago. TAG now employs 310 people.
The central London-based private equity firm Apiary Capital bought a majority stake in TAG from Arrowpoint Capital in 2018. Veronique resigned as a director of the business later that year, according to Companies House filings. Between 2018 and 2022 turnover swelled from £25 million to £41 million and profits from £2 million to £12 million.
City sources said that Rothschild would be looking to sell the business for up to 10 times earnings.
TAG and Apiary declined to comment.
Foo Fighters are also on the TAG team
JIM DYSON/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES
Veronique, a self-styled “boring accountant”, met Cowell while they were classmates at Windsor College. “We started to hang out and then we lived together in London in the early Eighties,” he told Business Travel News Europe.
TAG’s other clients have included Madonna, Guns N’ Roses and Justin Bieber as well as investment bankers and hedge fund managers.
The now-defunct Barings Bank was one of TAG’s first clients away from the music industry. This included making travel arrangements for Nick Leeson, the former derivatives trader whose unauthorised transactions led to the demise of one of Britain’s oldest merchant banks in 1995.
Entourages can be 150 people or more, Veronique said. This means show cancellations can lead to difficult conversations with hotel owners as block bookings for rooms are no longer wanted.
The average price of a business flight hit $749 last year, surpassing 2019 prices, and is expected to grow by 2.3 per cent this year. However, the pace of cost rises is expected to slow next year despite rising fuel costs, labour shortages and supply chain challenges.
Forecasts suggest a 1.8 per cent increase in 2024, according to figures prepared by the meetings specialist CWT and the trade body Global Business Travel Association.
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