After talking about Boris Johnson’s “unacceptable failings of leadership”, Dame Andrea Leadsom has clearly given up hopes of drawing a ministerial salary again any time soon.
Still, Leadsom, former leader of the House of Commons, is unlikely to go hungry. Bandal, the buy-to-let business she set up in 2003 with her husband, Ben Leadsom, is now sitting on £5.4m in property – which includes £734,257 of purchases made last year.
The acquisitions were supported with £3.8m worth of bank loans, as well as £600,000 in “other loans”. According to Land Registry records, the company owns six properties in Oxford and one in Woking. Leadsom owns no shares in the business and ceased to be a director in 2014.
Her name is, however, still officially associated with the company. There is a mention of 12 shares held by the “Mrs AJ Leadsom Children’s Settlement” as at August 2015, the last date for which a full shareholders list is available. The business gained some notoriety when Leadsom ran for leader of the Tory party in 2016 over its use of loans from offshore banks.
