Reflecting on 42 years at Christie & Co with Jon Patrick

After 42 years at Christie & Co, I recently announced that I will be retiring from the business. It marks the end of an extraordinary personal and professional journey - one that began as a young graduate, stepping nervously into the offices at 32 Park Square in Leeds, and unfolded into a career that allowed me to value, advise on, and sell leisure and hospitality businesses across the UK and Europe.

Starting out in an ‘analogue’ world

When I joined the company in October 1984, aged just 21, the world looked very different. I arrived proudly wearing my baco-foil suit, a pink leather tie, and carrying an empty (but hopefully impressive) briefcase. I was there to meet John Howard, the office manager and soon to be Managing Director of the company, and the interview quickly turned into a conversation about rugby and pubs, which suited me just fine. A week later, a letter arrived offering me the role of trainee pub negotiator. I was officially up and running.

Work in those days was entirely analogue. We had no mobile phones, no computers, no email, no digital cameras, no social media, and certainly no Teams or Zoom. Inspecting a business meant heading out with a manual SLR camera and a single roll of 35mm film. If you misjudged the light or the framing, you’d be driving back to take the photos all over again. We received rolls of photos we’d manually stick onto the sales particulars, while envelopes were often handwritten and posted at the end of each day.

Letters to solicitors could take seven to 10 days to get a response - if you got one - and preparing an inventory meant physically counting every fixture and fitting on site. I spent countless days in pub and hotel kitchens, logging equipment piece by piece, which left me with a deep understanding of how these businesses operate at their most fundamental level.

We were often handling up to 100 phone calls a day. Life was fast‑paced, just in a very different way than it is today.

Early lessons and memorable moments

Three months into the role, I received approval to undertake my first solo pub inspection. All went smoothly until a treacherous winter day in East Yorkshire, when I had an unwelcome encounter with a lorry carrying brewers’ malt. Calling the office from a stranger’s home, I had to confess to my colleague, Colin Wellstead, that his blue Ford Sierra - my transport for the day - might not survive. Miraculously, I kept my job, Colin received a smart new Vauxhall Carlton, and I was handed my first company car: an MG Metro.

Christie & Co in the mid‑1980s had an average age of just 33. Wednesdays meant curries at Kaghan Valley, while Friday lunchtimes often involved fish and chips at Brett’s in Headingley, followed by a pint at the Town Hall Tavern to mark the end of the working week.

Moves, milestones, and the growing corporate world

In 1987, my colleague Andrew Long and I headed north to open a new office in Newcastle, with Newcastle United legend Malcolm “Super Mac” MacDonald as our guest of honour. A few months later, John Howard asked whether I would move to London to manage the restaurants and wine bars team so my time in Newcastle came to an abrupt end. Driving in London was “interesting” with an A-Z on the steering wheel and walking the city to familiarise myself of its pubs and restaurants.

By the 1990s, I returned to Yorkshire to reunite with Colin and build our corporate pubs business. One of our early successes was securing instructions for 12 disposals from Whitbread’s Sheaf Brewery in Sheffield. Within a few years, we had established a steady base of around 300 disposal instructions at any one time across a wide range of clients.

Somewhere along the journey, Christie & Co also proved to be an excellent matchmaker. I met my wife, Joanne Sleightholm, in the Leeds pubs team in 1986, and in 1992 we joined the select group of colleagues who married after meeting at the company.

Career highlights and favourite assignments

Across four decades, I’ve been fortunate to work on some truly diverse and fascinating projects, both in the UK and internationally. A few highlights include:

• Tom Cobleigh – advisory work taking the business from zero to over 70 pubs, culminating in a flotation
• Whitbread’s Chiswell Street Brewery – selling this iconic 375,000 sq ft property and events business
• David Lloyd Leisure – conducting valuation and strategic reviews
• SI Centrum, Stuttgart – advising on the sale of a 1.35 million sq ft entertainment complex
• Wyevale Garden Centres – selling 146 sites for Terra Firma across 57 transactions
• Skegness Pier – selling the pier with our drone footage featuring on the BBC
• Macclesfield Town FC – completing the sale within 16 days of launch
• Eden Camp Modern History Museum – a quirky and memorable World War II museum in North Yorkshire and my final transaction

Some personal milestones include racing around the country inspecting hundreds of pubs for the Japanese financial group, Nomura, and setting my all‑time record of 16 inspections in one day. There were the undercover due diligence assignments, the meetings with restaurateurs such as Russell Joffe, Marco Pierre White, the Chez Max brothers, and my unforgettable first inspection with Nico Ladenis at Simply Nico.

International projects brought their own excitement. My Spanish assignments, working alongside Inma Ranera, stand out as particularly rewarding, plus my Spanish was non-existent!

Through all these experiences, my guiding principle has been to work with colleagues to deliver the best outcome for our clients, and that mantra has always served me well.

Looking ahead

As my time at Christie & Co draws to a close, I leave the business in very good health and with some exceptional young(er) talent who I know will keep pushing the boundaries. As I step away from full time work, I am looking forward to spending more time on my music, (which was actually what I originally wanted to do as a career!). That said, I am not closing the door entirely, and remain open to staying connected and contributing in different ways in the future, where my experience can add value.

I would like to thank everyone who has played a part in my career journey, but most of all I want to thank the Christie & Co team, both past and present, who I have had the pleasure of working with. We’ve shared many highs over the years, as well as navigating recessions, geo-political uncertainty, and a pandemic too. I enjoyed celebrating our ninetieth anniversary last year, which was a significant landmark, and I look forward to celebrating the centenary in 2035 - but as a guest this time!

A lot has changed since the day I walked into Park Square wearing that shiny suit and pink tie. But one truth has remained the same: this is fundamentally a people business. The relationships built along the way are what have made the last 42 years such an extraordinary experience.