Peel Group, majority-owned by Manchester billionaire John Whittaker, has submitted a £583 million offer for Rotherham-based property developer Harworth Group, potentially making it the latest company to depart the London Stock Exchange.

The proposed cash offer of 172.5p per share represents a 20.1 per cent premium to Harworth's previous closing price and a 36.9 per cent premium over its one-month average share price.

Peel Group, which already holds approximately 30 per cent of Harworth's shares, argues that the company's stock market listing "provides limited benefit" due to a "highly concentrated shareholder register" that "impacts its share liquidity and limits growth." The three largest shareholders collectively control more than 75 per cent of the business.

In its rationale for the acquisition, Peel Group stated that it believes "Harworth's cash flow profile is increasingly becoming less sustainable," describing the company's "direct development and hold strategy" as "capital-intensive, slow to deliver value and increasingly unable to generate appropriate risk-adjusted returns."

Harworth, originally formed from the remnants of UK Coal following the company's 2012 restructuring, has spent the past decade pivoting from mining operations to regenerating former industrial and brownfield sites across northern England and the Midlands. That heritage has left it with a substantial land bank of sites — many with existing power infrastructure and grid connections — that has become increasingly attractive amid surging demand for data centre capacity driven by cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

Whittaker, who was born in Bury and is estimated to have a net worth of around £2 billion, built his fortune through the landmark £1.6 billion sale of the Trafford Centre in Manchester in 2011 — the largest property transaction in British history at the time. He now resides in the Isle of Man.

The takeover approach comes during a busy period for Harworth. The company's shares surged more than 10 per cent earlier in the week following its announcement of plans to develop a new hyperscale data centre. Harworth confirmed it had "entered advanced negotiations with several counterparties for the sale of the site," for which planning permission has already been secured. The transaction is expected to exceed the £107 million the company received from a land sale to Microsoft in 2024.

Chief executive Lynda Shillaw said the data centre initiative "underlines Harworth's position as one of the most significant regional players in the rollout of the UK's digital infrastructure, working with some of the largest operators in the industry."

The bid for Harworth also adds to a growing list of UK-listed mid-cap companies being taken private by well-capitalised buyers, a trend that has accelerated as depressed public valuations relative to net asset value have drawn interest from property-focused investors and family offices seeking exposure to UK land and infrastructure assets.