EG Group: From a Bury service station to a $13bn IPO
EG Group is set to end 24 years as a private company with a $13bn float on the New York Stock Exchange, according to reports.
Co-founder of EG Group and current non-executive, Zuber Issa, told the Sunday Times that “the road map is starting now” on an IPO, with the float expected to complete this year or next.
Despite being founded in Greater Manchester in 2001, the group plans to float in New York, as it does most of its business in the States.
It would probably float under the name Cumberland Farms, which is an American convenience-store operator it bought in 2019, according to the Financial Times.
“If we had still had [the majority of] our assets in the UK, we would have had a much closer look at a UK IPO,” Zuber Issa told the Times.
It’s another blow for the London Stock Exchange, which has seen a raft of high-profile exits – takeaway service Just Eat, travel group TUI and Flutter Entertainment all disappeared in 2024 – and a number of snubs as private firms prefer to list elsewhere.
Rothschild, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are among advisers lined up to take part in the float, according to a report in Mergermarket late last year.
The launch has reportedly been brought to allow EG Group’s private equity backer, TDR Capital, to realise an exit alongside the Issa brothers. Currently, TDR and the Issa brothers each own roughly 50 per cent of EG Group.
TDR Group denied that the launch was “shareholder driven” and told the Financial Times that the idea was “far-fetched”.
EG Group’s timeline
2001: Mohsin and Zuber Issa bought a derelict forecourt in Bury, Greater Manchester, for £150,000, later adding a newsagent and grocers. It followed a childhood spent helping out at their father’s garage.
July 2009: After rapidly expanding into Lancashire, Euro Garages acquired its first motorway service area, Rivington services, and invested £12.5m in refurbishing the site. Around this time it made a number of partnerships with brands like Spar and Subway as it attempted to create a destination “where you could get fuel, food-to-go and shopping,” Zuber told the Financial Times in 2018. “This is the formula and it works.”
October 2015: Private equity firm TDR Capital purchased a minority stake in Euro Garages for £1.3bn, marking the start of a partnership which would later see the trio – TDR, Mohsin Issa and Zuber Issa – buy Asda in a debt-fuelled takeover in 2021.
October 2016: TDR’s European Forecourt Retail Group (EFR) expanded into Europe when it merged with Euro Garages to form a new firm, Intervias Group, which would later be renamed to EG Group. Further expansions in Europe followed with purchases in Germany in 2017. As of January 2025, it had 3,269 sites in Europe.
February 2018: EG Group expands into America, completing a $2.2bn deal to buy 800 convenience stores from Kroger and later a $330m deal to buy 225 Minit Marts Travel Centers of America LLC.
January 2023: EG Group’s debt peaks at $10m after the cost of number of debt-fuelled acquisitions was compounded by high interest rates.
May 2023: EG Group announced they would spin off the majority of its UK businesses to Asda for £2bn as it – successfully – started to bring down its debt.
June 2024: Zuber and Imraan Patel found EG on the move as a separate business to EG group, also buying up its remaining UK forecourt business, with Zuber moving from co-CEO to non-executive director. Mohsin remained as sole CEO of EG Group.