‘Clerys bought after secret meetings’

The iconic Clerys department store was purchased following a number of secret meetings as part of a plan called ‘Project Clock’, the High Court has heard.

The claim was made by one of the inspectors conducting an investigation into the collective redundancy of the store’s 460 workers in June 2015, hours after the group of companies that owned and operated Clerys was sold to a joint venture called Natrium by its previous owners, the US Gordon Brothers group.

Natrium is a joint venture made up of Cheyne Capital Management in the UK, and a company of Deirdre Foley, the owner of property firm D2 Private Ltd.