Loyalty Firm Bought for £368m

The UK's Loyalty Management Group (LMG), the firm behind the Nectar loyalty card scheme, has been sold to Canadian rewards programme group Aeroplan, in a deal which will provide Aeroplan with access to the shopping details of around ten million UK households.

Sir Keith Mills, LMG's founder in 1998, has since been known for setting up the Air Miles scheme, and for his work as Chief Executive of London's 2012 Olympics bid. He owned 46% of the firm's shares and will make around £161m once the deal is concluded at the end of the year.

LMG operates in three main areas: Nectar, Loyalty International and recently launched Insight and Communications (I&C), which provides insight into consumers' shopping trends from analysis of product and customer information collected through the Nectar card scheme.

The l&C team is led by Tesco Clubcard specialist MD Peter Gleason, who was previously MD of Retail Media at dunnhumby. Two other former dunnhumby executives Mike Poyser and Tim Collins work with Gleason, along with David Buckingham who joined after 12 years with IRI, and Andrew Corroll who was previously at Accenture where he led the UK marketing sciences practice. Collins is now responsible for managing the unit's relationship with its first customer, Sainsbury's.

Nectar has loyalty agreements with a host of major UK brands including Sainsbury's, BP, Debenhams, the AA and Ford, along with research firm TNS which gives panellists Nectar points for completing its surveys.

Aeroplan will continue to run Nectar and its own loyalty programme separately, and the LMG management team which includes its Co-Founder and Chief Financial Officer Alex Moorhead will stay on as part of the acquisition.

Mills and Moorhead established the Nectar brand in 2002 with the aid of £25m of Warburg Pincus funding. Mills said that the Nectar programme had grown to become the largest customer reward programme in the UK and added: 'Together with Aeroplan and the expertise of the current management team, LMG will be able to pursue international expansion and capitalise on the significant opportunities in loyalty and data management.'

Web sites are at www.loyalty.co.uk and www.aeroplan.com.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.