Issa brothers finally repay EG Group loan used to buy private jet
The Issa brothers have finally repaid the huge loan they borrowed from their own forecourt and retail empire to buy a private jet, City PM can reveal.
The billionaire duo had owed as much as $41m (£31m) to EG Group via an Isle of Man-based company they controlled called Clear Sky 2, which was used to acquire a Bombardier Global 6000 jet.
The pair took out the loan in 2018, initially on an interest-free basis. But the terms were later changed after the arrangement was flagged up by auditors, with the company instead charging what it called a “commercial rate” of interest.
In accounts published in June, EG Group said the loan was “past due” and warned that it would seek to “exercise its guarantees” to recover the amounts due if the brothers did not pay up by the end of the second quarter of its financial year.
Subsequent accounts published this month by EG’s finance arm, EG Finco, show that Clear Sky 2 has now paid off the loan “in full.”
EG Group declined to comment on the loan.
High flying execs
The Bombardier jet, which although not owned by EG Group, was emblazoned with a vanity call sign ending in EG and would periodically charge EG when it was used for business travel purposes.
The jet, together with another owned by the duo, was also used for leisure purposes, flying between London and the Caribbean more than 50 times over a two-and-a-half-year period, City PM revealed last year.
EG Group, which is co-owned with private equity firm TDR Capital, is no longer run by the brothers, who have both stepped back from day-to-day operations over the past year.
The loan repayment comes amid a challenging period for some corners of the brothers’ sprawling business empire.
A Scottish zero-emission vehicles company which the Issas had invested millions of pounds in was this week rescued from collapse in a pre-pack administration deal, City PM revealed yesterday, while a credit card company co-owned by the pair last week warned on its future as a going concern after it took out a high-interest payment-in-kind (PIK) loan to pay off outstanding debts.