RECLUSIVE TYCOONS VIEW €35M SHOW BOAT September 5, 2011 WHAT TO do when there are simply no luxury yachts on the market you want to buy? Easy – start your own yacht business and build your own, as Richard Beattie did when he discovered an alarming lack of “contemporary 21st-century superyachts” for sale. “I fully expected to just go and buy one I liked, [...]
Lewis seeks out Irish tycoons in brewing battle September 14, 2011 JOE LEWIS has told associates he wants to meet JP McManus and John Magnier, his friends and fellow shareholders in Mitchells & Butlers, to enlist their support in his fight to take full control of the pub chain. According to one source who was yesterday at a meeting on Lewis’s boat Aviva, the financier expressed [...]
Costa Coffee lifts turnover at Whitbread September 6, 2011 WHITBREAD cheered the market yesterday after reporting a sharp rise in sales at its Premier Inn and Costa Coffee chains, despite the continuing shaky consumer climate. The hotel and restaurant group was the top performer in the FTSE 100 after posting a 4.8 per cent increase in like-for-like sales in the 11 weeks to 18 [...]
Costa Coffee lifts turnover at Whitbread September 6, 2011 WHITBREAD cheered the market yesterday after reporting a sharp rise in sales at its Premier Inn and Costa Coffee chains, despite the continuing shaky consumer climate. The hotel and restaurant group was the top performer in the FTSE 100 after posting a 4.8 per cent increase in like-for-like sales in the 11 weeks to 18 [...]
Sky may lose out in Pub TV football case February 3, 2011 THE Premier League’s battle with a Portsmouth-based publican suffered a major setback yesterday. A senior advocate from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) threw her weight behind landlady Karen Murphy in a landmark case, paving the way for a decision that could change the landscape of sports distribution rights in Europe and cost Sky £70m [...]
Stonegate in merger agreement June 23, 2011 Stonegate Pub Company has merged with Town&City Pub Company, its private equity backers TDR said yesterday. The new group operates 560 pubs with revenues near £500m and employs over 10,000 people. The merger with Yates’s and Slug & Lettuce operator Town&City creates the largest privately held managed pub operator in the UK after Stonegate bought [...]
Punch fires starting gun on demerger July 7, 2011 PUNCH Taverns yesterday confirmed that the demerger of its “good” managed estate from its “bad” and highly-indebted tenanted pubs business will take place at the beginning of next month. The company’s managed division will be known as Spirit, and the tenanted division will retain the Punch name. They will be separately listed and start trading [...]
UBS has little scope to outflank Joe Lewis September 26, 2011 THE spotlight, when it comes to UBS, is currently on where the investment bank goes from here, but elsewhere there are teams of bankers getting on with their day jobs. In London, Nick Reid and his team are trying to do the impossible; advise the pubs group Mitchells & Butler on how it might get [...]
UBS has little scope to outflank Joe Lewis September 26, 2011 THE spotlight, when it comes to UBS, is currently on where the investment bank goes from here, but elsewhere there are teams of bankers getting on with their day jobs. In London, Nick Reid and his team are trying to do the impossible; advise the pubs group Mitchells & Butler on how it might get [...]
FAMILY TRAVEL October 2, 2011 Having spent much of my childhood climbing apple trees, playing pooh sticks and putting out milk for hedgehogs at my grandfather’s home in Suffolk, it felt natural to kick off this monthly travel column by revisiting the South East with my own family in tow (hubby, bump, two year-old Clementine). We packed up the car [...]