Bernard Ginns: Endless will go on as one of founding three steps down

One of Yorkshire’s most successful partnerships has come to an end.

David Newett, the self-taught property investor, has retired from Endless, the turnaround investor he helped launch with accountants Garry Wilson and Darren Forshaw.

The publicity-shy businessman provided Endless with the capital to launch its first fund in 2005. With some bank debt, the fund amounted to £135m.

The three partners invested in 20 deals and achieved some great successes, notably Peter Black International, the Marks & Spencer supplier, and Neville Johnson, the bespoke furniture designer.

Mr Newett provided the property expertise while Mr Wilson and Mr Forshaw provided the turnaround skills. “It worked very well,” Mr Wilson tells the latest issue of Yorkshire Vision, out today.

“We were able to generate gains from property and turnarounds in those days.”

Mr Newett was one of the big investors in Fund II, which brought in money from all over the world – with fund manager Jakub Crhonek as the cornerstone investor – and closed at £164m in 2008.

Fund II made 15 investments, including Barnsley engineer Amco Group, Crown Paints and The Works discount book chain.

In spring 2011, Endless started raising Fund III. It had been a long time since any deals involved property assets so Mr Newett indicated to his partners that he wanted to retire.

Mr Wilson and Mr Forshaw said they leapt at the chance to take on the firm themselves.

The pair would not comment when I asked about returns for the investors. But looking at the figures from disposals that are in the public domain I suspect they will run into the tens of millions of pounds. The two remaining partners went on to close Fund III at £220m last summer in one of the biggest fundraisings since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Mr Wilson is proud of what has been achieved over the last seven years.

He told Yorkshire Vision: “We are raising money for investment in struggling UK businesses. Fund I gave us a great track record at buying and turning around and also selling businesses with excellent investment returns.

“We demonstrated that it could be done. As the economy has deteriorated people have thought there must be an opportunity to take advantage of those businesses which perhaps are not managed as well as they could be and should benefit from any economic upturn.”

With his support for the first fund, Mr Newett provided the backing to save businesses that would otherwise have failed. The partnership has saved thousands of jobs. You can read the full interview with Mr Wilson and Mr Forshaw in Yorkshire Vision.

The quarterly magazine promotes the best businesses in Yorkshire to a regional, national and international audience.

We send copies to all MPs, MEPs and trade attaches at leading embassies and consulates in London as well as to top business organisations.

We want the world to know that Yorkshire is a great place to do business and to invest by highlighting the success stories of companies like Endless.

The original partnership may be no more, but the good work carries on.

I HAVE written and researched many stories about Yorkshire companies doing business in China. But I have not come across many Chinese companies who are investing over here.

Until last week, when I met Wayne Zhu.

He is the UK chief executive of Bosideng, the Chinese retailer with 11,000 stores in the People’s Republic.

That’s more than twice as many stores as Tesco, to give you some idea of scale.

Bosideng reaches out to the same demographic as brands like Hugo Boss and the typical customer is 20-plus, metropolitan, fashion conscious and willing to pay a premium.

Its European range has UK fashion designers and uses traditional materials like tweed which are given a subtle eastern twist.

With some help from Yorkshire lawyers at Gordons, Bosideng opened its first overseas flagship store in London and plans to use the UK as its base to enter the European market. The company will launch an e-commerce platform later this year and is in talks to open concessions in top department stores.

Bosideng is looking for freeholds in prime city locations. Mr Zhu was quite guarded when I asked where, but he said Edinburgh and “Leeds is probably a potential target after Manchester”.

He lives in Leeds and works in Bradford. He could be based in London, but he is not. It’s good to have people making European business decisions from Yorkshire.