Brasserie Blanc buys Chez Gérard

Chez Gérard has been sold to the tycoon who built up the Loch Fyne restaurants chain for a runoured £10 million.

Mark Derry, who sold Loch Fyne to Greene King for £70 million just before the markets collapsed in 2007, will transform the restaurants into Brasserie Blancs, the more upmarket chain he set up with celebrity chef Raymond Blanc in the late noughties.

The Chez Gérard name will probably quietly disappear.

The acquisition includes Chez Gérard's site in Covent Garden's piazza overlooking the Royal Opera House, as well as six others, mainly in the Square Mile.

Chez Gérard was one of the restaurants in the old Paramount Group, a stock market quoted company. However, the business, which included Bertorelli's, fell on hard times and in 2009, its banks - Barclays, RBS and HSBC, took control.

Derry said: "These are very very good leases and very, very good properties."

He added: "Perhaps we could even get Raymond Blanc to sing from the Opera House terrace. On second thoughts, that might not be such a good idea."

He said he plans to spend £4 million refurbishing the properties. Derry, who has reassembled much of the management team from Loch Fyne to expand Brasserie Blanc, raised £20 million from private equity house Core Capital in September.

The Chez Gérard staff will stay with the business, which will continue being run by John Lederer, the restaurateur.