Leger Shearings Goes Fully Management-Owned
A £50m-plus buyout hands a leading UK escorted coach operator to its two top executives, who plan to push Leger upmarket. Agents get a steadier, premium-minded partner.
One of the UK’s best-known escorted coach tour operators now belongs entirely to the people who run it. Group chief executive Liam Race and chief financial officer Andrew Oldfield have taken full ownership of Leger Shearings Group in a management buyout worth more than £50 million, fully exiting founder Ian Henry and his family, according to Shakespeare Martineau, the law firm that advised the management team, on 6 October. NatWest funded the deal. For agents, the deal settles the ownership question at a company that has been in transition since 2019, and it comes with a clear commercial direction: upmarket.
Seven years to full control
The buyout is the end point of a staged handover. In 2019, management, including chief product officer Chris Plummer, acquired an initial 30% stake. In 2020, the group acquired the Shearings brand and assets, creating Leger Shearings Group.
With this deal, the Henry family and Plummer both exit the business.
The numbers it is selling
The group has more than doubled in size since 2019, has recorded 20 consecutive months of growth, and its sales and forward bookings are ahead of any previous year at this stage, according to the deal announcement. It carries about 100,000 passengers a year across Leger Holidays, Shearings, Stitchtopia and First for Bridge. No revenue figures were published.
“This is a hugely proud moment for me and Andy, and the natural next step in a journey we started in 2019,” Race said. Oldfield said: “This was a complex transaction with a lot of moving parts.”
Premiumisation, and Lumina
The stated priority is to move the Leger brand further upmarket, and the flagship is Lumina, a new coach that enters service in spring 2027 on more than 40 escorted European holidays. Leger says it seats 27 guests in a 2+1 layout, with a panoramic glass roof, seatback entertainment, free Starlink wi-fi, a rear servery with complimentary drinks, and two hosts plus a dedicated curator on each departure. Named itineraries include a Grand Tour of Switzerland, Lake Garda, Venice and Verona, and La Rioja and San Sebastián. It is Leger’s first new coach concept since its Luxuria fleet launched in 2015. Leger has published only AI-generated images of the coach and notes the finished vehicle may differ.
For advisors
- Who to pitch Lumina: escorted-tour and river-cruise regulars who would rather not fly, since Leger positions Lumina as a premium alternative to flying, and clients who have ruled out coach touring as too crowded. Twenty-seven seats is the selling point.
- When: spring 2027 departures are on sale now; book early for the Swiss and Italian lakes itineraries.
- What to check: ask your Leger BDM for Lumina pricing against Luxuria on the same itinerary, and for the confirmed first departure date.
- Watch for: product and trade investment from an owner-managed business with no outside equity to answer to.
Sources
Editor-in-Chief of Not An Atlas and founder of Loveseyland. Former Director of Digital and Video at Canadian Geographic and a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.