\n<\/p>\n
A multimillionaire used-car salesman was ousted from his \u00a3300m company after \u201ca pre-conceived and orchestrated plan\u201d devised by private equity investors that had backed his business, a high court judge has ruled.<\/p>\n
Peter Waddell, 60, was forced out as the chief executive of the Kent-based dealership Big Motoring World in 2024 in a coup that resulted in \u201cmore-or-less open warfare\u201d at the car seller and caused \u201cunfair prejudice\u201d to the investment company that held Waddell\u2019s majority stake.<\/p>\n
The judgment came despite Waddell also being found by Mr Justice Marcus Smith to have been \u201cproperly dismissed for gross misconduct\u201d after allegations he made a series of racist and sexist remarks.<\/p>\n
However, the judge further concluded that Big Motoring World\u2019s private equity investor, Freshstream, did not address Waddell\u2019s behaviour in order to later trap him and then attempt to seize full control of the business without paying for the shares via a pre-agreed contract known as a call option.<\/p>\n
Smith said: \u201cI have found the formation and execution of a pre-conceived and orchestrated plan which worked backwards from Freshstream\u2019s aim of achieving permanent control of, and Mr Waddell\u2019s removal from, the business without <\/em>having to exercise the call option.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout question, there were matters that should \u2013 long before this point in time [2023] \u2013 have resulted in some form of disciplinary process against Mr Waddell, hopefully not resulting in dismissal but in imposing limits on someone who was (for all his serious faults) the gifted and duly appointed [chief executive] of Big.\u201d<\/p>\n The judge went on to say that Freshstream allowed Waddell\u2019s behaviour \u201cto continue, unchecked, until Freshstream was in a position to cause Mr Waddell\u2019s exclusion from Big\u201d.<\/p>\n The tycoon, who is deaf and has dyslexia, has a backstory involving a childhood spent in care and a spell of homelessness before building up his multimillion-pound car business from scratch.<\/p>\n He ended up creating a company with 525 employees, revenues of \u00a3371m and profits of \u00a36.6m, according to the 2021 annual accounts \u2013 a record that prompted Freshstream to acquire about a third of the business in April 2022, with the option of eventually acquiring Waddell\u2019s remaining shares.<\/p>\n Waddell, who says that his manner of speaking was known to Freshstream before the company acquired its initial stake, claimed that a downturn in the company\u2019s trading prompted his investors and colleagues to devise a plan to wrest control from him. Reflecting on the judgment he added that \u201cjustice had been done\u201d and that he now wanted to reacquire the company.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Freshstream said: \u201cWe welcome the judge\u2019s findings that Peter Waddell was rightly dismissed for gross misconduct, including repeated acts of bullying and harassment (including sexual harassment). Further, we are pleased that a number of Mr Waddell\u2019s claims in respect of [the holding company\u2019s] exercise of its rights under the shareholders\u2019 documents have failed. Therefore, Freshstream remains in control of the business.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotionFree newsletter | Every weekday<\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cIt is disappointing that the judge has made a number of findings \u2026 in relation to steps \u2026 to address Mr Waddell\u2019s conduct, despite his obvious acts of racism, misogyny and bullying.\u201d<\/p>\n The spokesperson added that those accused of not taking action were \u201cconsidering all available options with their legal teams\u201d.<\/p>\n Remedies will be decided at a future hearing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A multimillionaire used-car salesman was ousted from his \u00a3300m company after \u201ca pre-conceived and orchestrated plan\u201d devised by private equity investors that had backed his business, a high court judge has ruled. Peter Waddell, 60, was forced out as the chief executive of the Kent-based dealership Big Motoring World in 2024 in a coup that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[9767,4291,1120,1466,1545,3106,675,25106,9776,1436,666,25105],"class_list":{"0":"post-51557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-300m","9":"tag-automotive","10":"tag-boss","11":"tag-firm","12":"tag-industry","13":"tag-investors","14":"tag-judge","15":"tag-orchestrated","16":"tag-ousted","17":"tag-plan","18":"tag-rules","19":"tag-usedcar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}