High entrepreneurs and financiers caught up in collapse of luxurious jeweller Vashi

Some of Britain’s main entrepreneurs and financiers are dealing with vital monetary losses from the implosion of Vashi, the upmarket jeweller.

Sky News can reveal that Sinclair Beecham, the co-founder of Pret a Manger, Nick Wheeler, founding father of the shirtmaker Charles Tyrwhitt, and William Jackson, chief govt of London-listed non-public fairness agency Bridgepoint, are all buyers in Vashi.

The trio are amongst a major variety of people who pumped tens of hundreds of thousands of kilos into the jeweller, which offered bespoke objects corresponding to engagement rings costing tons of of hundreds of kilos.

City sources mentioned on Thursday that different distinguished people had been additionally buyers in Vashi’s dad or mum firm, Diamond Manufacturing Ltd.

JamJar Investments, the enterprise capital agency arrange by the founders of Innocent Drinks, can be amongst its shareholders.

Richard Reed, one of many Innocent founders, was named in an investor presentation created by Vashi as an adviser to the model, saying it had “the potential to do to the jewellery establishment what Airbnb did to hotels – upturn the current consumer proposition, give a better, more authentic personal experience, create an entirely new and better way”.

According to the corporate’s web site, its buyers included “the founders and CEOs of major global brands, managing partners at private equity firms, and several family offices”.

The household workplace of Lord Spencer, the previous ICAP chief, can be understood to have been an investor however offered its stake two years in the past, in keeping with an individual near the state of affairs.

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Vashi’s liquidation was triggered by a winding-up petition filed by Canary Wharf Group, one in every of its store landlords, Sky News reported on Wednesday.

Its shareholders now face the lack of their total funding within the enterprise, in keeping with one investor.

Vashi had been looking for £75m in new funding at a valuation of £250m, telling potential backers that it deliberate to make use of the proceeds to develop into the US.

The firm’s collapse is prone to increase critical questions on its governance and the standard of its monetary oversight, in keeping with one observer.

As Vashi’s liquidator, Teneo Financial Advisory will now examine the conduct of its dad or mum firm’s administrators as a part of the insolvency course of.

It traded from 4 shops and is claimed to make use of about 200 folks.

The firm was based by Vashi Dominguez, who opened his first retailer on London’s Piccadilly in 2016.

In a press release, Teneo mentioned it had been appointed “by the Secretary of State following the making of a winding-up order”.

“The intention of the liquidators is to locate and preserve assets of the business for the benefit of creditors,” the assertion added.

Vashi boasted on its web site that it had seen tenfold gross sales progress between 2016 and 2019 and had been ranked twenty sixth within the 2019 Sunday Times checklist of Britain’s fastest-growing non-public corporations.

Mr Dominguez was a regional winner within the accountancy agency EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year awards in 2021, the corporate’s web site mentioned.

Vashi couldn’t be reached for remark.