Blackstone, the US private equity giant behind Bourne Leisure, is mulling a bid for Parkdean Resorts.
Bourne and Blackstone are working with investment bankers from Bank of America on a possible takeover proposal for Parkdean, which is one of Britain’s biggest holiday park groups.
Parkdean has been put up for sale by Onex Corporation, the Canadian investment group that bought the caravan parks operator for £1.35bn at the end of 2016.
Bourne is best known as the owner of Butlin’s, but it also operates the Haven caravan parks business and the adults-only Warner Leisure Hotels.
It is thought that Blackstone and Bourne believe Parkdean would fit well with the Haven business, which runs 37 parks around the country.
Parkdean operates 66 parks from Newquay in Cornwall and Carmarthen Bay in Wales to Dornoch in the Scottish Highlands. It emerged in the autumn that the company and its owner Onex had appointed bankers from Morgan Stanley to start working on a possible sale.
Bourne and Blackstone are circling a bid for Parkdean at the same time as they seek a buyer for Butlin’s. Butlin’s has three parks and is the smallest of Bourne’s three businesses. It emerged in November that investment bankers from Rothschild had been hired to explore a possible sale.
