Dunelm founder’s son sells £114m of shares

The deputy chairman of Dunelm has sold £114 million of shares at a discount but says he “remains fully committed” to Britain’s largest homewares retailer.
Sir Will Adderley — the son of the founder and a former Conservative party donor — and an investment vehicle controlled with his wife placed 10 million shares, or 4.9 per cent of Dunelm’s share capital, with institutional shareholders at £11.40 each.
The share sale, Adderley’s first since February 2021, was intended to diversify his portfolio, which spans public and private equity, debt, commercial property and land.
Accounts for his Marlborough Property Co vehicle in January showed that the value of his portfolio of shops and offices fell by more than £40 million last year amid a slump in the commercial property market.
The share placing was completed at a 7.7 per cent discount to Dunelm’s closing price on Monday. The shares fell by 6.3 per cent, or 78p, to close at £11.57 on Tuesday. They had risen 15 per cent over the past six months.
Dunelm said that Adderley, 52, “remains fully committed to Dunelm in his role as deputy chairman as well as remaining a very substantial shareholder in the company”.
The Adderley family remains Dunelm’s largest shareholder with a 37.6 per cent holding.
The retailer was founded by Bill and Jean Adderley in 1979. They started out with a market stall in Leicester selling curtains and home textiles, close to a stall where Gary Lineker’s family sold vegetables.
The company floated in 2006 with a valuation of £340 million. It is now the biggest homewares retailer in the UK with a market cap of £2.33 billion, about 180 stores and 11,500 employees, and annual sales of £1.7 billion.
Adderley has worked for Dunelm his entire career and joined the board in 1992. He became chief executive in 1996, taking over the day-to-day running of the group from his father. In 2011 he became deputy chairman, before returning as chief executive in 2014. He resumed as deputy chairman in January 2016.
As part of the share sale, which was handled by Barclays, Goldman Sachs and UBS, he has agreed not to sell further shares for at least 180 days.