Dynamic Harm nets pounds 14m from squash

Harm Tegelaars, who founded Dynamic Leisure in 1980 with the proceeds of the sale of his house after discovering how badly managed squash clubs were, yesterday netted a pounds 14m windfall after selling his company to Vardon.

Vardon, the leisure group that owns the London Dungeon, will increase in size by 50 per cent following the pounds 40.5m purchase of Dynamic Leisure, which trades as Archer Leisure.

The acquisition takes Vardon, founded in 1992, into leisure clubs for the first time and completes its plans to develop a broad base in the leisure sector. The group already operates a string of bingo clubs, Sea Life centres and the Park Dean chain of caravan parks.

Dynamic Leisure runs 25 leisure operations for eight local authorities, owns nine health and fitness clubs operating under the Metropolitan name and three public lawn tennis clubs.

Forecast profits of pounds 4.5m for Dynamic Leisure for the current year to December are expected by analysts to raise their predictions for the enlarged Vardon group's pre-tax total from pounds 9.14m last time to pounds 12.4m. Consideration for the acquisition will be through the issue of 33.8 million shares and pounds 3.1m in cash, raised through a placing at 118p a share.