8:55 am, August 26, 2025
Former Lookers director Nigel McMinn has spoken of the extreme personal stress he faced when the FCA investigated the car dealer group.
Speaking to the Car Dealer Podcast in a candid and open interview, the 56-year-old describes the time around his departure from the listed motor business as a ‘very difficult period’.
He said he found it ‘terribly distressing’ and that it led him to ‘probably drink too much’ as he battled to deal with the pressure.
The FCA opened an investigation into the sales processes at Lookers in June 2019 and, after a series of profit warnings, McMinn left his post as chief operating officer, at the same time as CEO Andy Bruce, in November of that year.
In the months following their departure, and with the FCA investigation hanging over the group’s head, Lookers was embroiled in a fraud investigation, plus its 2019 accounts were delayed four times in a row.
This ultimately led to the shares in the company being suspended in July 2020 and when the accounts for 2019 were finally released they showed a £45m statutory loss.
It wasn’t until January 2021 until shares in the business began trading again. Throughout the period McMinn was unable to defend himself because of the active investigations.
‘It was a terribly distressing period when you can’t get the microphone back and say “Look, we haven’t actually done any of this stuff”,’ McMinn told the Car Dealer Podcast.
In March 2021, the FCA closed its investigation without imposing any sanctions. It expressed ‘concerns’ relating to its ‘historic culture, systems and controls’, but advised Lookers it was shutting down its probe into the business.
McMinn said: ‘Some people wanted to believe it. I reflect back and think maybe I deserve some of that.
‘Maybe there was a certain degree of arrogance or overconfidence, or, I don’t know, maybe you get a bit carried away with your own hype sometimes when you live in a sort of bubble at the top of one of these companies.
‘But I have to say, I’ve come out of it feeling much more grounded, much more humble, much more sort of connected to the things in life that really matter.
‘In truth, for probably 20 years, I had hardly seen my family. I’d largely disconnected from friends because work calls always took priority and actually, you know, I probably didn’t keep myself in good shape.
‘I probably drank too much. It’s a social sort of industry. It’s easy to fall into that trap. I suspect there’ll be lots of people in senior positions who will recognise that.
‘I was in four different hotels, four different nights a week. And to me, a hotel was a bar with rooms, so part of the way I coped with the stress was probably go and have a beer or a glass of wine.’
McMinn took some time out following his departure from Lookers before attempting a management buy-out, again alongside his former Lookers colleague Bruce, of fleet management company, Fleet Alliance in 2021.
He told the podcast that ‘didn’t work out’ so has now bought into recruitment company Pybus.
McMinn said in the year that followed his departure from Lookers he focused on getting ‘fit for purpose’.
‘I stopped drinking altogether,’ he said.
‘I lost a lot of weight, and I started running and then cycling and getting a lot fitter. And I re-evaluated my priorities in life, and I realised, actually, I was a much happier person at that kind of healthy, grounded level.
‘I was under a much greater degree of pressure than I’d ever even acknowledged to myself.’
Lookers was eventually snapped up by Canadian dealer group Alpha Auto Group in a £465m all cash offer via the bidding vehicle Global Auto Holdings. The deal was completed in October 2023 taking Lookers off the Stock Market and into private hands.
But has McMinn ever felt the need to get back into automotive retail?
‘I was really tempted to get back into it many times over the last few years,’ he said.
‘Part of me realises I don’t want to go back into that kind of relentless seven day a week, 14-15 hour days.
‘It just never stops, does it? It’s the nature of retail, and I largely loved it for the best part of that 30 years. But if you’re going back into it, you need to know you’re going back into the lion’s den. And there’s no way you can switch it off.
‘But I suppose the other thing is, in truth, you become yesterday’s man really quickly, and I can see it in recruitment now, that if somebody’s been out of the firing line for a year or two, it becomes much harder to get them back into this position that they they were in, companies will, will always favour somebody who’s right in it now.
‘So even if I had wanted to, I’m not so sure that that I could have.’
You can watch the episode in full at the top of this story on YouTube or listen to it on Spotify via the embedded link above. The episode is available on all podcast platforms now.
Lookers timeline: What’s happened when?
January 29, 2021 – Lookers revealed it lost £36.1m in the first half of 2020. The interim results led to shares being relisted on London Stock Exchange. They immediately rose 77 per cent.
January 6, 2021 – Lookers appoints Anna Bielby as interim chief financial officer, but there was no news on the delayed interim results.
December 29, 2020 – A third of shareholders vote against Lookers directors’ remuneration packages – including CEO Mark Raban’s £450k salary – at a general meeting.
December 18, 2020 – Lookers tells investors that its interim results, promised to be delivered before the end of the year, will now not be published.
December 9, 2020 – Lookers reveals interim CFO Jim Perrie has quit early and says it is ‘unlikely’ the interim results will be out before the end of the year.
November 25, 2020 – Lookers finally releases its annual accounts for 2019 showing a statutory loss for 2019 of £45.5m. Promises interim results in December and the hopeful reinstatement of shares on Stock Market.
October 31, 2020 – Long-standing Lookers non-executive director Tony Bramall, one of the group’s major investors, brings forward the date he will leave the board to the end of December. No reason is given for his early departure.
October 19, 2020 – Lookers updates market on performance in Q3, but still no word on its 2019 accounts or the FCA investigation. Analysts expect results to be out before December.
August 20, 2020 – Accounts delayed for fourth time and no promise given as to when they’ll be published.
June 9, 2020 – Lookers says it will suspend shares on July 1. Delays accounts for third time and says they’ll be published ‘no later than the end of August 2020’.
June 5, 2020 – Lookers says it will axe 12 dealerships and cut 1,500 jobs.
May 2020 – Pendragon CEO Bill Berman admits he wrote to Lookers to discuss a merger and updates Stock Market to that effect. Move described as ‘two drunk men bumping into each other in a bar’.
April 2020 – Fraud investigation deepens. £4m charge revealed and firm says there could be more. Delays accounts to June.
March 12, 2020 – New chief operating officer Cameron Wade leaves role after only a month in post.
March 11, 2020 – Lookers delays results, saying that in final stages of preparation ‘potentially fraudulent transactions’ in one division were discovered. Promises results in April.
November 2019 – Chief executive Andy Bruce and chief operating officer Nigel McMinn leave firm abruptly.
June 2019 – FCA launches review into sales processes at Lookers between January 2016 and June 2019. Lookers cannot ‘estimate what effect, if any, the outcome of the investigation may have’.
December 2018 – Lookers launches independent internal audit into sales process. It eventually finds ‘control issues’ in sales process where ‘improvements’ are needed. Findings handed to FCA.
