Well-run companies profit even in hard times October 23, 2011 YOU could be forgiven for not noticing, but it is earnings season again. Once you finish trawling through the endless speculation about the next phase of Eurozone debt crisis in the papers and on TV, you’ll eventually find some good old-fashioned company news reporting. Let me summarise. Well-run companies with good products are holding up [...]
Punch Taverns to spin off managed pubs division March 22, 2011 Embattled pubs firm Punch Taverns on it would demerge its managed pubs division, Spirit, as part of a strategy to reduce its £3bn debt pile. The company, which is the biggest pubs group with 6,770 establishments, said it would demerge its better-performing Spirit business from its struggling tenanted business to create two independent public companies. [...]
Punch Taverns to spin off managed pubs division March 22, 2011 Embattled pubs firm Punch Taverns on it would demerge its managed pubs division, Spirit, as part of a strategy to reduce its £3bn debt pile. The company, which is the biggest pubs group with 6,770 establishments, said it would demerge its better-performing Spirit business from its struggling tenanted business to create two independent public companies. [...]
Whitbread in dividend hike as profits lift October 18, 2011 WHITBREAD yesterday reported forecast busting first-half pre-tax profits and ramped up its interim dividend. The performance of its Premier Inn and Costa Coffee chains fuelled the rise. Whitbread, which also operates the Beefeater and Brewers Fayre pub restaurant chains, said underlying pre-tax profits rose 15.2 per cent to £174.9m in the six months to 1 [...]
Greene King’s bid for Capital is unconditional August 22, 2011 BREWER Greene King’s bid to acquire Capital Pub Company, in a deal that values the 34-strong London pub operator at £70m, has been declared wholly unconditional. Greene King said that as of the first closing date of the offer on 19 August, it had received valid acceptances in respect of 19.795m Capital Pubs shares, representing [...]
Ivell takes on a new exec role at M&B October 27, 2011 BOB IVELL was yesterday confirmed as executive chairman of Mitchells & Butlers as interim chief executive Jeremy Blood stepped down, following a bruising period when largest shareholder Joe Lewis made an aborted takeover attempt. The shake-up brings the number of board-level changes in the last four years to nine, with six chairmen and three chief [...]
JOE LEWIS CLAN BEARS HIS FOURTH GENERATION November 22, 2011 The Capitalist is pleased to reveal that Joe Lewis’s first great-granddaughter has arrived into the world. The name of the currency billionaire’s new clan member is Charlotte, born in London to Joanna, the daughter of Lewis’s daughter Vivienne Silverton, who runs the family’s Isleworth Foundation. Lewis scuttled back to the Bahamas shortly after Charlotte arrived [...]
Another one bites the… pub February 21, 2011 The Fox & Grapes 9 Camp Road, Wimbledon Common, SW19 4UN. Tel: 020 8619 1300 FOOD SERVICE ATMOSPHERE Cost per person without wine: £28 GORDON Ramsay did it, Heston’s done it, Marco Pierre White did it first, the chaps at the Ledbury have done it and won an extra Michelin star in the process. These [...]
Card games trigger Panel probe at M&B September 18, 2011 REPORTS that Joe Lewis enjoyed games of cards with JP McManus and John Magnier on board his yacht Aviva over the summer, as revealed in City A.M. on 15 September, have prompted the Takeover Panel to re-open their files on alleged collusion between the two parties to seize control of pubs chain Mitchells & Butlers. [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS November 3, 2011 Jupiter Unit Trust Managers Simon Somerville (left), deputy manager of the Jupiter global managed fund, will take over as manager of the £256m fund from John Chatfeild-Roberts on 14 November. Chatfeild-Roberts will become deputy manager of the fund. Somerville, who joined Jupiter in 2005 from the position of head of global equities at Cazenove, will [...]