According to La Información, Food Delivery Brands, owner of Telepizza and Apache and master franchisee of Pizza Hut, has made a change to its Board of Directors. The company has appointed Manuel Echenique Sanjurjo, M&A partner at Uría Menéndez, as secretary of its highest decision-making body. With this appointment, acording to the same media Echenique becomes the head of the catering group’s Legal department.
Manuel Echenique has been a partner at Uría Menéndez since 2012 and is one of the best known faces in the elite of the Spanish legal sector given his meteoric trajectory in the M&A area. From now on, the lawyer will combine his new position with his work at the firm, a very common practice in the legal sector.
According to the same media, the choice of Echenique has not come as a surprise in the legal world, given that the lawyer advised the KKR fund during the delisting tender offer that took Grupo Telepizza off the stock exchange in 2019. The deal consolidated the US private equity firm as the largest shareholder in the restaurant group which, a year later, was renamed Food Delivery Brands. KKR’s stake in the conglomerate’s capital exceeds 84.3%, through Tasty Bidco, a vehicle in which other partners such as Altamar, Artá Capital, Torreal and J. Safra Sarasin also participate.
Telepizza’s owners have also incorporated Gorka Atutxa Bernaola, an associate at Uría Menéndez and a specialist in Capital Markets and M&A, as deputy secretary of the board. Like Echenique, Atutxa previously worked for Food Delivery Brands. The two recent additions come after KKR promoted a profound reorganisation of the top management of the former Telepizza Group, including a change of CEO.
