About 20 City institutions had a stroke of good fortune yesterday morning when a 9 per cent stake in Booker Group unexpectedly came on to the market. On Tuesday afternoon, after the close of play, JP Morgan Cazenove said that it would be placing the stake held in Booker by Metro, of Germany.
This was acquired when Booker bought Metro’s Makro operation in Britain in May 2012. The lock-in period ended in July. Metro runs several department stores and an electrical goods chain in Germany, but Makro was loss-making in the UK.
The deal has been spectacularly successful for Booker. It provided an unlooked-for opportunity for expansion in a market where growth tends to be incremental. It also took the company farther into catering, a