The entrepreneur accused of ‘misappropriating’ millions from embattled courier Yodel
Luke Barr
6 min read
Jacob Corlett owned Yodel for four months before he says he was ‘forced to sell’ the business - Penny Cross/Plymouth Live/BPM Media
A millionaire courier tycoon has been accused of stripping vast sums of money from the delivery giant Yodel, escalating a bitter High Court row over the company’s botched rescue deal.
Jacob Corlett has been hit with a raft of allegations by Yodel chief executive Mike Hancox, who has claimed the 30-year-old entrepreneur used an attempted merger to “misappropriate” assets.
Yodel is one of the UK’s biggest delivery companies with an annual turnover of £500m and includes AO World, Argos and Zara among its customers. It was also named the second-worst courier company in the country by Ofcom in October.
Court papers reveal a litany of claims against Mr Corlett who tried to incorporate Yodel with his start-up company Shift earlier this year.
Some of the most serious allegations include claims that Mr Corlett “proceeded on a course of asset stripping” after buying Yodel for a £1, subsequently raiding the company’s accounts to enrich himself and pay off debts to Shift’s disgruntled suppliers.
After becoming a Yodel director in April last year, it is claimed Mr Corlett extracted millions of pounds under the cover of “spurious invoices”.
The alleged impropriety also includes claims Mr Corlett sought to evade tax by funnelling money from Yodel into an offshore company that listed only him and his mother as directors.
Mr Corlett rejects the claims made by Yodel, instead seeking to paint Mr Hancox as the villain in the failed merger between Shift and Yodel.
In his defence, Mr Corlett insists the deal fell apart after four months of backstabbing and infighting, claiming Mr Hancox turned on him after previously claiming he “had every confidence” in the buyer.
Mr Corlett alleges he was forced to sell his stake in Yodel under coercion from Mr Hancox and his backers, including London-listed company PayPoint.
Yodel boss Mike Hancox, pictured, denies claims he coerced Jacob Corlett into selling him the business - Ash Hussain
This has since prompted a counter-claim from Mr Corlett, who has accused Mr Hancox, who now owns Yodel through a company called Judge Logistics, of reneging on a promise to hand over shares.
He is now involved in a push to regain control of the company from Mr Hancox alongside 73 other investors, claiming Yodel has suffered a sharp drop in performance since he was ousted.
Mr Corlett said: “Instead of honouring those obligations, he has made vindictive, baseless allegations with no supporting evidence – in a transparent attempt to pressure me into abandoning my legal rights, which will not succeed.
“I, alongside 73 other warrant holders, have lost faith in Mike Hancox’s ability to run and operate Yodel and have chosen to exercise warrants to the combined value of 70pc of the company.
“Trading deteriorated over the Christmas period to such an extent that Mr Hancox sought to divert volumes to rival operators, that’s no way to run a £500m business. It is redolent of his failed strategy and mismanagement. A new direction is clearly required at Yodel.”
The bitter dispute comes after the Barclay family sold off Yodel to Mr Corlett for £1 in April under pressure from its lenders at HSBC. The cut-price deal formed part of a firesale across the Barclays’ empire, which also resulted in the family losing control of The Telegraph.
At the time, Mr Corlett was hailed as a “white knight” for saving thousands of jobs at the Liverpool-based business, which was on the brink of insolvency under the Barclays and the management of Mr Hancox. He was first appointed chief executive of Yodel in 2019.
The deal was a coup for Mr Corlett, who had previously offered £100m for the company – only to be knocked down on price after discovering the true nature of Yodel’s dwindling cash pile.
“Mr Corlett had originally offered in excess of £100m for the shares in Yodel,” court papers claim. “Following conversations with Clearwater, who were the appointed brokers selling the business, that figure was reduced to £10m.
“He reduced his offer to £1 following a call from Mike Hancox, who informed him that measures had been taken to reduce the company’s cash at bank by pre-paying suppliers.”
However, it did not take long for relations to sour and the proposed merger to unravel.
According to court documents, Mr Hancox claims the fallout stemmed from Shift’s “precarious” financial situation, which Mr Corlett failed to mention during acquisition talks for Yodel.
To highlight the strain across Mr Corlett’s start-up empire, Mr Hancox claims that one of Shift’s main trading companies was liquidated in July 2024, leaving behind a deficit of £8.5m – including £2.2m owed to HMRC.
Financial pressures immediately jeopardised Mr Corlett’s promise to inject £22m into Yodel, court papers claim, as the entrepreneur instead sought to raise tens of millions of pounds in expensive debt to keep the troubled company afloat.
During his four-month tenure on the board of Yodel, it is alleged he orchestrated a string of damaging decisions to enrich himself.
This includes signing Yodel up to a software agreement with Shift on “manifestly uncommercial” terms, costing the business up to £18m a year.
This was alongside claims that he burdened the company with “expensive advisory fees” during a fundraising process with a boutique investment bank.
However, perhaps the most serious of the allegations relate to asset stripping “under the pretext of ‘merging’ the two businesses”, as Mr Corlett is accused of issuing £2.6m worth of “fictitious” invoices for fees relating to licensing fee arrangements.
Yodel claims the invoices “were not for a genuine debt or liability owed by Yodel but were entirely fictitious in nature”, allowing Mr Corlett “to extract money in order to confer benefits on Shift Group and himself”.
The company added: “In the brief time that Mr Corlett was a director of Yodel, he failed to carry out any services of value to Yodel but instead systematically stripped its assets and misappropriated its money”.
The allegations deal a blow to Mr Corlett’s burgeoning entrepreneurial career, having drawn investment from hundreds of backers to turn Shift into one of the UK’s largest logistics companies.
This includes the Duke of Norfolk, Edward Fitzalan-Howard, who was responsible for the state funeral of Elizabeth II in 2022 and the coronation of the King the following year.
Other high-profile investors include Lord Nash, a Tory peer and venture capitalist.
In his defence, Mr Corlett claims he never had any “personal involvement or even knowledge” of money transferred from Yodel to Shift, while also claiming he “derived no personal benefit” from the payments.
“Throughout his entire time as owner and director of Yodel, Mr Corlett did not direct or procure a single payment,” he argues.
It will now be down to a High Court judge to determine who is lying in this bitter spat, creating another unwanted sideshow for one of Britain’s largest delivery giants.
A Yodel spokesman said: “Yodel is aware of a number of groundless claims about our business being made by a former director which we refute in their entirety.
“This director’s involvement in our business was short-lived and is now the subject of significant legal proceedings instigated by Yodel.
“Last summer, Yodel went on to conclude a new ownership structure under long-standing chief executive Mike Hancox which saw the business backed by a consortium of investors.
