Nikko Cordial Corp has sold British motorway services group RoadChef to Israeli property company Delek for £375m including debt. 

The troubled Japanese securities firm bought RoadChef in 1998 for £175m, later adding Blue Boar and Take a Break to the business, and estimated that this deal implied an enterprise value of £425m, if securitised bonds being assumed by Delek were repaid in full today.

Nikko Principal Chief Executive Offer Brian Berry said in a statement “We are pleased with the price we have received…RoadChef today is a stronger, higher quality and better invested business than it was when we acquired it.”

RoadChef, run by Chief Executive Martin Grant, employs over 2,000 people and is Britain’s third largest motorway services group. It now runs 29 service stations which cater for 65 million visits a year, including Europe’s largest service station at Clackett Lane on the M25. The group reported sales of £132.2m for 2006.

Delek Real Estate is the property arm of Israeli holding company Delek Group Ltd, whose interests span the energy, automotive and real estate sectors. Delek Group is listed in the benchmark Tel Aviv 25 Index and Delek Belron owns a substantial property portfolio in the UK.

Nikko Principal and Vision Capital were advised on the sale by Hawkpoint.