Controversial past of new City bar owner

Former liquidator, politician and buyer of Ryan's and The Arbitrageur has fallen foul of the regulators. Adrian Gatton explains

The new owner of two of the City's most famous bars – Ryan's and The Arbitrageur – is a Liberal Democrat politician and former liquidator who was fined for malpractice by accountancy regulators.

Le Bar Group, owned by Peter Yeldon, is set to buy Ryan's, an Irish theme pub, together with its sister establishment, The Arbitrager, which is across the road from the London Stock Exchange.

However, Mr Yeldon, 40, a Le Bar Group director and former "star liquidator" at accountancy firm Smith & Williamson, has a history every bit as colourful as the City watering holes that he is purchasing.

In 1993, Mr Yeldon – who then drove a red Lotus Esprit Turbo – gained national notoriety when the press reported how his pregnant wife, who had just learned he was having an affair, stormed into the office of his Mayfair accountancy firm and unloaded all his suits, shirts and ties on to the floor.

Mr Yeldon, who became head of Smith & Williamson's insolvency practice, was then a "star liquidator" managing problem ventures such as liquidating offshore companies in the Maxwell empire, the collapse of Palace Pictures and the then fashionable Xenon's nightclub in Leicester Square.

But in 2000 the high-flying Mr Yeldon – who has been adopted as the Liberal Democrat's parliamentary candidate for Salisbury despite failing to secure a council seat last week – ran into trouble after he was "severely reprimanded" and fined for malpractice by the Professional Standards Office of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).

In November 2000, Mr Yeldon pleaded guilty to the ICAEW's charge that between 1992 and 1995, acting as a trustee in bankruptcy, he had "failed to take steps to realise his interest in a debtor's former matrimonial home" and had "failed to provide information about his intentions in dealing with the debtor's former matrimonial home to the debtor's former wife". He was ordered to pay a £3,000 fine and £700 costs.

Mr Yeldon resigned as a director from Smith & Williamson's companies in October 2000. However, Smith & Williamson told The Independent on Sunday that Mr Yeldon officially left the firm in February 2001. Mr Yeldon said that his departure from the firm was unconnected to the reprimand and that he had left to run his own venture capital projects. He is now a liquidator at a small practice, Middleton Partners, and on his political website he claims to have been a "senior adviser" to the Russian government.

Mr Yeldon, whose sister is Patsy Calton, Liberal Democrat MP for Cheadle, is now pursuing a political career and the future expansion of his Le Bar Group.

However, a previous venture into the clubs and bars business ended in tragedy after a huge south London club he owned, called SE1, under London Bridge station, was the scene of an incident in June 2001 when two clubbers at the venue died from Ecstasy intoxication.

After the incident, when Mr Yeldon, who had invested £300,000 in refurbishing the club, moved to get the licence renewed, police objected at the hearing. They claimed in their report that there were "a large number of drug dealers operating openly within the premises". However, the licence was granted but Mr Yeldon later sold the club citing the tragedy as the reason.

Neither a police investigation nor the coroner's inquest held Mr Yeldon responsible.