Andy Hornby

Andy Hornby
Born	1967-01-21January 21, 1967 (age 59) Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England
Nationality	British
Education	St Peter's College, Oxford (BA, English literature); Harvard Business School (MBA)
Occupation	Businessman
Company	The Restaurant Group
Title	Chief Executive Officer

Andy Hornby (born Andrew Hedley Hornby, 21 January 1967) is a British businessman who has been chief executive of The Restaurant Group, the owner of Wagamama, since August 2019. He is best known for having been group chief executive of HBOS, then the United Kingdom's fifth-largest bank, from 2006 until its emergency takeover by Lloyds TSB during the 2008 financial crisis.

Hornby was born in Scarborough and brought up in Bristol. He read English literature at St Peter's College, Oxford, and took an MBA at Harvard Business School before beginning his career at the Boston Consulting Group and Blue Circle Industries. He joined the retailer Asda in 1996, rising through corporate development, store operations and the George clothing brand, before moving into banking with Halifax in 1999.

At Halifax, and then at HBOS after its formation from the 2001 merger of Halifax and Bank of Scotland, Hornby rose from head of the retail division to chief operating officer in 2005 and group chief executive in 2006. He held that post when HBOS came close to collapse in September 2008 and was acquired by Lloyds TSB, a takeover completed in January 2009. A 2015 regulatory report found that the Financial Services Authority should have investigated Hornby's conduct and had wrongly decided in 2010 not to do so, though the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority concluded in 2022 that no enforcement action would be taken against him.

After leaving HBOS, Hornby ran the pharmacy and health and beauty group Alliance Boots from 2009 to 2011, then spent most of the following decade in gambling, as chief executive of Coral from 2011, chief operating officer of Ladbrokes Coral from 2016 and joint chief operating officer of GVC Holdings from 2018. He became chief executive of The Restaurant Group in 2019, leading the company through the COVID-19 pandemic, a company voluntary arrangement, repeated shareholder revolts over his pay, and its acquisition by the private equity firm Apollo Global Management in 2023, after which he remained in post.

Early life and education

Hornby was born on 21 January 1967 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, and was brought up in Bristol. Companies House records his date of birth as January 1967, consistent with the widely reported birth date. He studied English literature at St Peter's College, Oxford, and went on to take an MBA at Harvard Business School.

Career

Boston Consulting Group and Blue Circle Industries

Hornby began his career at the Boston Consulting Group, where he worked on assignments in the retail, consumer goods and financial services sectors. After completing his MBA at Harvard, he joined the cement and building materials group Blue Circle Industries, where he held a series of general management roles before moving into retail in 1996.

Asda (1996 to 1999)

Hornby joined the supermarket group Asda in 1996 under chief executive Archie Norman, initially as director of corporate development. He was subsequently made retail managing director, with responsibility for a network of stores and their staff, and later managing director of the George clothing brand under Norman's successor as chief executive, Allan Leighton. In 1999, at the age of 32, he was promoted to Asda's management board.

Halifax and HBOS (1999 to 2009)

Hornby left Asda in November 1999 to become chief executive of Halifax's retail division. When Halifax merged with Bank of Scotland in September 2001 to form HBOS, he was made chief executive of HBOS's newly created Retail Division. He became HBOS's group chief operating officer in July 2005, and in the first half of 2006 he succeeded James Crosby as group chief executive, a position he held until the bank's acquisition by Lloyds TSB, which completed in January 2009.

As group chief executive, Hornby led HBOS through a period of rapid balance-sheet growth built substantially on wholesale funding. A subsequent regulatory report recorded evidence from Peter Cummings, the former head of HBOS's Corporate Division, that the demands for higher growth within the bank had come from Hornby, as group chief executive, and the wider executive committee, and that there had been very little push-back from HBOS's own Group Risk Division. By September 2008, amid the global freeze in wholesale credit markets, HBOS's funding position had become unsustainable and the bank came close to failure; it was rescued through a takeover by Lloyds TSB, backed by UK government support. Hornby gave evidence to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, which published its report into the banking crisis, Banking Crisis: dealing with the failure of the UK banks, on 1 May 2009. According to that report, Hornby accepted before the committee that HBOS had been "over-reliant on wholesale funding" and that "the Board should have done more to reduce this reliance". He was retained by Lloyds Banking Group on a consultancy basis for a period after the takeover before leaving to take up his next role. One FSA enforcement official later recalled, in evidence to the 2015 review, that by early 2009 there was already a view within the regulator that Hornby would "not be allowed back into the industry" in a similar role, since it seemed "highly unlikely" that someone who had been in charge of a bank which had collapsed would be approved to take on the same kind of role again; Hornby nonetheless went on to become chief executive of Alliance Boots later that year and to hold further chief executive roles afterwards.

The FSA's and its successor regulators' handling of the HBOS failure, and Hornby's role in it, remained under scrutiny for more than a decade afterwards; this is addressed in the Controversies section below.

Alliance Boots (2009 to 2011)

On 1 July 2009, Hornby became group chief executive of Alliance Boots, the international pharmacy-led health and beauty group, which at the time employed more than 115,000 people across more than 20 countries. He worked alongside executive chairman Stefano Pessina and fellow executive committee members Ornella Barra, Alex Gourlay, George Fairweather and Marco Pagni. He resigned as chief executive on 25 March 2011.

Coral, Pharmacy2U and Ladbrokes Coral (2011 to 2018)

Hornby joined the Gala Coral Group on 18 July 2011 as chief executive of Coral, then a retail estate of around 1,750 betting shops alongside an online, telephone and mobile betting business. In June 2012, while remaining chief executive of Coral, he was also appointed chairman of the internet and mail-order pharmacy Pharmacy2U, a position he held until 2017, when he stood down following the sale of a majority stake in the business to new private equity investors.

Hornby remained chief executive of Coral until 2016, when Gala Coral completed its merger with Ladbrokes to form Ladbrokes Coral, and he became the enlarged group's chief operating officer, a role he held until 2018.

GVC Holdings (2018 to 2019)

Following the 2018 acquisition of Ladbrokes Coral by the gambling group GVC Holdings, Hornby became joint chief operating officer of GVC. He left the company in July 2019 to take up the role of chief executive of The Restaurant Group.

The Restaurant Group (2019 to present)

The Restaurant Group's appointment of Hornby as chief executive was announced on 3 May 2019; he succeeded Andy McCue, who had stepped down in February 2019, with Debbie Hewitt leading the company on an interim basis in between. At the time of his appointment, the company operated more than 650 restaurants and pub restaurants across several brands, including Frankie & Benny's, Chiquito and Garfunkel's, and had completed a £559 million acquisition of the noodle chain Wagamama at the end of 2018; the company's annual profits had halved to £13.9 million the previous year, reflecting store closures and acquisition costs. Hornby took up the role on 1 August 2019 and was appointed to the board with effect from that date, a start date confirmed by his appointment as a director of The Restaurant Group Limited on 1 August 2019.

Hornby led TRG through the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2020, with UK hospitality venues closed under lockdown, the company told staff that a large number of its outlets, mainly Frankie & Benny's sites, would not reopen; it subsequently entered a company voluntary arrangement covering around 125 sites. Over the following year the company closed roughly 230 restaurants and cut more than 4,000 jobs.

Hornby's remuneration attracted repeated shareholder opposition. In October 2020, following the year of pandemic closures and job losses, more than a third of TRG's investors voted against his pay package at the company's annual meeting. In April 2023, the activist investor Irenic Capital Management, which held around a 1 per cent stake in the company, said it would vote against Hornby's pay at the May 2023 annual meeting; Irenic argued that his compensation structure gave him "little incentive" to unlock the company's potential and linked it to acquisitions such as the 2022 purchase of the burrito chain Barburrito for around £7 million. The following month, the proxy adviser Glass Lewis said it had "serious reservations" about TRG's pay practices and recommended shareholders vote against the 2023 remuneration report, noting that the company had reported pre-tax losses of £86.8 million even as bonus payments continued; Hornby's salary for 2023 was set at £674,450 before performance-related bonuses. Another shareholder, Oasis Capital Management, which held a 12.3 per cent stake, had separately described his pay as "disproportionate" and "tone deaf".

In December 2023, Apollo Global Management completed its acquisition of The Restaurant Group through a vehicle called Rock BidCo, in a deal that valued the company at approximately £506 million on a fully diluted basis, with an enterprise value of about £701 million, roughly nine times adjusted EBITDA. Hornby and chief financial officer Mark Chambers remained in their roles as directors of the company; the chair, Ken Hanna, and four other non-executive directors resigned, and two Apollo partners joined the board. Companies House records show Hornby resigning as a director of TRG Concessions Limited in October 2022 and of BTG Leisure Holdings Limited in June 2023, while continuing as a director of core group companies including Wagamama Limited, Brunning and Price Limited, Chiquito Limited and TRG (Holdings) Limited. Following the Apollo deal, Companies House records show Hornby taking on further directorships of Apollo-linked holding and financing entities in the group's ownership structure, including Rock BidCo Jersey Limited in July 2024, Rock HoldCo Jersey Limited in September 2024, and several Waga-branded holding companies in March 2025, alongside Wagamama Group Limited and Wagamama (Holdings) Limited in June 2025.

As of 2025 and 2026, Hornby continued to speak publicly as chief executive of The Restaurant Group about Wagamama's expansion. In May 2021 he said the pandemic had not reduced the company's ambition to expand Wagamama but had changed where new restaurants would be located, with fewer city-centre openings. In August 2026 he discussed Wagamama's entry into India, where the company opened its first restaurant in Mumbai through a joint venture with Charcoal Concepts and K Hospitality rather than a franchise model; Hornby said the partners were chosen for their track record and that the venture had set a target of 100 restaurants across India over the following decade, while TRG continued to plan only 30 to 40 further UK openings for the brand from a base of around 180 UK sites. In October 2025 he defended the removal of several plant-based dishes from Wagamama's menu, saying they "simply didn't tempt enough diners".

Leadership and management style

At HBOS, Hornby's style was described by Lloyds Banking Group's own finance function, in evidence later summarised by regulators, as closely hands-on within the areas he knew best. HBOS was said to have been run as a series of "fiefdoms": Hornby and his retail colleague Dan Ellis were "all over Retail because that was their background and that was what they understood", while Peter Cummings was given comparatively free rein over the Corporate Division, which had lower-profile risk and finance functions and weaker controls, including gaps in covenant monitoring and collateral registration. Cummings separately told investigators that the push for higher growth across HBOS had come from Hornby and the executive committee, with little challenge from Group Risk. Hornby's own account, given to the FSA and to the Treasury Select Committee, was that HBOS executives had "listened to siren voices very carefully" and had taken steps such as increasing deposit growth "faster" from 2006 to 2007 to reduce risk, while accepting that the board "should have done more" to reduce the bank's reliance on wholesale funding.

Colleagues who worked with Hornby at Alliance Boots described his approach there as collegiate, working as part of an executive committee alongside executive chairman Stefano Pessina rather than exercising sole authority over the group's divisions. At The Restaurant Group, Hornby has repeatedly framed his strategy around narrowing the brand portfolio around Wagamama while managing decline in the company's older, casual-dining estate; this was reflected in the disposal of peripheral directorships such as TRG Concessions in 2022 and BTG Leisure Holdings in 2023 while he remained personally on the boards of the group's core trading subsidiaries. On menu strategy, he has been willing to reverse popular but commercially weak product lines, telling trade press in 2025 that plant-based dishes would only be retained if they attracted sufficient customers rather than for their own sake. On international expansion, he has described a cautious, partnership-based approach, saying TRG needed "three or four successful sites" operating in both Mumbai and Delhi before judging whether Wagamama had found a winning formula in India, prioritising profitability and customer satisfaction scores over rapid unit growth.

Major deals and strategic decisions

During Hornby's time as HBOS group chief executive, the bank pursued the rapid balance-sheet and lending growth that a 2015 regulatory review later found had left it "over-reliant on wholesale funding", a dependence Hornby himself acknowledged to the Treasury Select Committee in 2009. The bank's rescue by Lloyds TSB, completed in January 2009, was the dominant deal of his tenure, although it was executed as a takeover of the business rather than one initiated by Hornby.

At The Restaurant Group, Hornby's most consequential decisions included the 2020 company voluntary arrangement, under which the company closed around 125 sites and shed thousands of jobs in response to the collapse in trade during COVID-19 lockdowns; the 2022 acquisition of the Mexican-style chain Barburrito for approximately £7 million; the narrowing of the group's portfolio around 2022 and 2023, reflected in his resignations from the boards of TRG Concessions Limited and BTG Leisure Holdings Limited; the December 2023 sale of the company to Apollo Global Management for an enterprise value of about £701 million; and the 2025 launch of a joint-venture entry into the Indian market for Wagamama.

Financial and market performance

The Restaurant Group's share price fell by approximately 70 per cent between Hornby's arrival in 2019 and the spring of 2023, a period that included the pandemic closures, the company voluntary arrangement and continuing losses; the company reported a pre-tax loss of £86.8 million in the year to which its May 2023 annual meeting related, more than double the prior year's loss. The company's move into private ownership was completed in December 2023 at an equity value of approximately £506 million on a fully diluted basis and an enterprise value of about £701 million, equivalent to roughly nine times adjusted EBITDA. By 2025, the Wagamama brand, TRG's flagship, had grown to 228 locations globally including UK, US and franchise sites, as the company continued to expand the brand under Hornby's leadership even as its other, older brands were reduced or disposed of.

Board memberships and outside roles

Hornby was a non-executive director of Home Retail Group, and previously of its predecessor GUS plc, for five years, including a period as chairman of the group's remuneration committee, standing down in July 2009 when he joined Alliance Boots. He was chairman of Pharmacy2U from June 2012 to 2017. Within The Restaurant Group's corporate structure, Companies House records list him as a director of numerous group subsidiaries and, following the 2023 Apollo transaction, of holding and financing entities including Rock BidCo Jersey Limited, Rock HoldCo Jersey Limited and several Waga-branded holding companies used in the deal's ownership structure.

Controversies

Hornby's tenure as HBOS group chief executive, and the bank's near-collapse in 2008, remained the subject of regulatory and parliamentary scrutiny for more than a decade after he left the company. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) considered in early 2010 whether to open a formal investigation into Hornby's oversight of HBOS's Corporate Division, concluding that the statutory threshold for launching an investigation had been met but that it was unlikely to be able to establish personal culpability against him, and it decided not to proceed; the FSA instead focused its enforcement resources on Peter Cummings, the former head of the Corporate Division.

In the period immediately after HBOS's rescue, from December 2008 to February 2009, the only individual the FSA gave proper consideration to investigating was Cummings; a 2015 review found no evidence that Enforcement or Supervision staff had ever discussed, or been given any answer to, the question of why Hornby was not also being referred for investigation, with one interviewee recalling only that "the name Andy Hornby rings a bell... but I don't think his name was ever raised in the context of 'Should we also refer him as well?'" In early 2010, the FSA's enforcement case team did examine Hornby's oversight of the Corporate Division, with assistance from Ernst & Young, and internal notes described the case as one where the FSA might "focus its limited resources on the most senior culpable manager", a phrase a staff member later confirmed referred to Hornby. The team concluded that the statutory threshold for opening an investigation into Hornby had been met, recording in one note that there was a "case to answer but v[ery] difficult and timing issues", but on 10 February 2010 decided there was no present need to interview him, and by March 2010 the FSA had decided not to open a formal investigation, concluding it was unlikely to be able to establish personal culpability within the time available.

In November 2015, a report commissioned from Andrew Green QC on behalf of the successor regulators, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), found that the FSA's decision-making process had been "materially flawed" and that the regulator should, at a minimum, have investigated Hornby from early 2009; the report concluded that the March 2010 decision not to investigate him, despite the FSA's own view that the statutory threshold for investigation was met, "was not reasonable". The report quoted an unnamed former senior FSA employee as saying that "the people most culpable were let off", identifying those people as the former group chief executive and former chairman, Hornby and Lord Stevenson. The report also recorded the defence Hornby had given to the FSA and, separately, to the Treasury Select Committee: that HBOS executives had "tried to increase deposit growth and grew deposits faster" from 2006 to 2007 to reduce risk, that he had "listened to siren voices very carefully", and that the bank had taken steps to reduce its risk profile, while acknowledging that "if we could have gone even further… that would have been a beneficial situation". Published alongside the Green report, the FCA and PRA's own review of HBOS's failure concluded that ultimate responsibility rested with the bank's board and senior management, who had "failed to set an appropriate strategy for the firm's business and failed to challenge a flawed business model which placed inappropriate reliance on continuous growth without due regard to risks involved".

Following the Green report's recommendation that the regulators consider afresh whether former senior managers, including Hornby, should face enforcement investigation, the FCA and PRA reopened the question. On 26 August 2022, the two regulators announced that their independent decision-makers had each determined that no further enforcement action would be taken against the former senior managers concerned.

At The Restaurant Group, Hornby's remuneration was repeatedly opposed by shareholders. More than a third of investors voted against his pay package at the October 2020 annual meeting, held after a year in which the company had closed around 230 restaurants and cut more than 4,000 jobs during the pandemic. In 2023, the activist investors Irenic Capital Management and Oasis Capital Management separately criticised his pay as poorly aligned with shareholder returns, and the proxy adviser Glass Lewis recommended shareholders vote against the company's 2023 remuneration report, citing continued bonus payments despite a widening pre-tax loss and a share price that had fallen around 70 per cent since Hornby became chief executive. In October 2025, his decision to remove plant-based dishes from Wagamama's menu drew public criticism from vegan and plant-based food commentators, which he addressed directly in trade press interviews.

See also

• The Restaurant Group
• Wagamama
• Alliance Boots
• James Crosby

External links

• The Restaurant Group, official website