Pub landlord is jailed for forging signature

A PUB landlord and parliamentary candidate for the British National Party has been jailed for forging a signature to assist the sale of a Northumberland hotel.
Peter Mailer, 54, had used his former manager’s signature to push through the £245,000 sale of the Hen and Chickens Hotel, in Berwick.

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Analysts give M&B pub sale the thumbs up

The move by Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) to sell 333 drink-led pubs and late night venues to private equity firm TDR Capital has received the thumbs up from City analysts.

The O'Neills and Harvester owner this morning announced the sale of the "non-core" pubs for £373m to a newly-formed pub and leisure group created by TDR, called Stonegate Pub Company.

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Pub becomes a part-time Post Office

A pub will be sending parcels as well as serving pints after beocming a part-time Post Office.

The Three Horseshoes at Brimpton, near Reading, is filling the void left by the village’s own Post Office. Over the last eight years residents have had to travel miles for post services but will now have a postmistress at the pub twice a week.

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Nationalise pubs? Well, why not

All three major parties have pledged to "save the pub", two parties have come out with separate pub manifestos. As the election neared the Labour government even thought it would be a good idea to create the first minister for pubs.


The cynic might dismiss this as pre-election flimflam, meant to impress voters that politicians really do care about what ordinary people care about.

The pub is a safe, sexy topic. Everyone loves pubs, even if they don’t use them, so politicians must love pubs too. Even if they haven’t the faintest clue about how the industry works.

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M&S Finance Chief Dyson Quits to Lead Punch Taverns

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Marks & Spencer Group Plc said Finance Director Ian Dyson resigned to become chief executive officer of Punch Taverns Plc, the U.K.’s largest pub owner.


Dyson will leave “on a date to be agreed,” the London- based retailer said in a statement today. Marks shares fell 2.7 percent, to the lowest level in almost a month.

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Mitchells & Butlers rejects suitors seeking All Bar One chain

Mitchells & Butlers, the pub and restaurant operator, has rebuffed preliminary approaches from a number of private equity firms keen to buy its Browns and All Bar One chains.

The approaches come after a strategy review unveiled last month by John Lovering, M&B’s new chairman, which encouraged suitors to believe that the company may consider offers for several concepts outside its six principal brands. But insiders last night rejected the idea that its 14 Browns restaurants and 37 All Bar Ones would be among them.

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Top 22 UK restaurant groups in 2009

Managed pub group Mitchells & Butlers retained its status as the UK's largest restaurant operator in 2009.


The group added 47 new venues to its portfolio to bring its total estate to 775, 190 more than its nearest rival Gondala which owns the PizzaExpress, Ask and Zizzi chains.

The list only features pub groups where food accounts for 50% or more of turnover, and also includes Whitbread, Punch Taverns, Greene King and Orchid

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Punch Taverns chief Giles Thorley quits

Giles Thorley, chief executive of Punch Taverns, Britain's biggest pub group, today said he was quitting after nine years at the helm. The company said it was "well advanced with the process of appointing a successor" and that Mr Thorley would stay on until his successor is appointed. Although external candidates are being considered, Punch has two strong internal candidates who have helped Mr Thorley put the group on a more even keel.

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Pub landlord arrested after body found in freezer

The landlord of a Norfolk pub five miles from royal residence Sandringham House has been arrested after the body of a woman, believed to be his fiancé, was found in the freezer in a put outhouse.
Mike Tucker, 49, and Becky Thorpe, 29, had run the 18th-century Compasses Inn in Snettisham since Easter Sunday last year, and became engaged in September.
Thorpe had not been seen for a week before the frozen body – which will will not be formally identified until early this week – was discovered by an employee lastTuesday lunchtime.

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'Buy a pub and lose your life's savings'

Did you know there was a minister for pubs? It’s enough to make you want to go into politics and spend a large portion of the week doing invaluable research. I became aware of this most enviable role only last week, when I heard that the present incumbent, John Healey MP, is encouraging potential investors to sink their pennies into pubs.

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Admiral Taverns set to sell up to 200 pubs

Admiral Taverns, the 2,000-strong pub company bailed out by its bank late last year, is understood to be looking to sell up to 200 of its pubs.

Licensees were told of the planned disposal of their businesses by letter today.

Sources would not confirm the exact number of sites, but The Publican understands it is between 150 and 200 pubs.

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London Town goes into administration

After months of speculation London Town, the indebted property developer turned pub operator, has gone into administration.

In a complicated deal while the group’s holding company, London Town plc, has gone into administration the two companies – GRS Pubs Ltd and GRS Pub Investments Ltd – which hold the group’s 200-odd freehold pubs have not gone into administration and continue to trade as normal under the guidance of administrator David Chubb of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC )

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Barracuda reports £336,000 loss for 2009

Barracuda Group has posted a £336,000 pre-tax loss on a turnover of £33m for 2009.

The firm, which manages pubs under the Smith & Jones, Varsity, Barracuda Bar, Juniper and Cape brands warned that the pub industry continued to face "considerable challenges" due to the recession and increasing duty charges from the Government.

But the firm, which operates 80 freehold pubs and 142 leasehold properties, said that it could cope with the pressures of the economy and that its "larger than average" pubs meant that it could continue to grow food sales.

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'Beer cheaper than soft drinks in half of UK's pubs'

Pubs are charging up to 60p more for a soft drink than a pint of beer, a Sunday Mirror survey reveals.A pint of standard bitter is cheaper than an equivalent amount of non-alcoholic drink such as cola and lemonade in ­almost HALF of Britain’s pubs.One city centre bar was ­charging £2.60 for a pint of orange juice – when its bitter was just £2.The massive mark-ups on non-alcoholic drinks were last night condemned by health ­campaigners.Our researchers went to 17 pubs in Plymouth, ­Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester and ­compared the price of bitter and lager with a pint of orange juice or lemonade.

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Mitchells & Butlers dispute intensifies as investors call for new board

The racing tycoons JP McManus and John Magnier have waded into the fight at Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) by calling for those responsible for the £500 million of hedging losses to be pursued for the money.

Elpida, the duo’s investment vehicle, has written to the board of the pub company before tomorrow’s annual meeting confirming that it will vote its 17.6 per cent holding “to achieve a new independent board”, thereby aligning itself with Joe Lewis, the billionaire trader at the centre of the spat

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Enterprise Inns benefits from selling poorer pubs

Despite the recession and the recent cold spell, many people were still pitching up for a drink at their local, according to Enterprise Inns.

Britain's second biggest pub company said it had seen particularly strong Christmas trade and while the extreme weather kept customers away from some pubs "it brought extra custom to others and highlighted once again the key role that the pub plays at the heart of many communities."

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GMB to ballot "thousands" of pubs on industrial action

The GMB union said today it hopes to be in a position to ballot up to 25,000 tied pubs on whether to take industrial action against pubco landlords by the end of January next year.

Paul Maloney, GMB National Officer for tied tenants, said his organisation wanted to secure a reduction in the amount pubs pay their landlord of around £12,000 per pub and industrial action was on the cards.

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Punch Taverns shares tumble on gloomy outlook

Shares in Punch Taverns, Britain's biggest pub company, fell 3 per cent today after it said that profits had continued to fall at the same rate as last year.

The group, whose weak performance and huge debt pile has forced it to sell off hundreds of pubs, said that profits "remained under pressure" with like-for-like income on its leased estate for the first 16 weeks of its financal year falling at a similar rate to last year — when they dropped 11 per cent.

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Troubled pub operator Pubs 'n' Bars goes into administration

Troubled pub operator Pubs 'n' Bars has gone into administration

David Thurgood, Trevor O'Sullivan and Nick Wood of Grant Thornton have been appointed as administrators of the firm, which runs 87 "community pubs" in the South East.

The move comes days after the AIM-listed firm requested that trading in its shares be suspended.

In September the Pubs 'n' Bars' subsidiary Moorgate Taverns, which held an estate of ten freehold public houses, was put into administration.

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Pubs close in Scotland over licensing chaos

A deadline of 1 December was set for venues to submit names and details of new premises managers. If Licensing Boards’ records showed this had not been done, licences were automatically revoked.

A spokesman for Aberdeen City Council said: “Twenty one premises have yet to advise licensing of the name and details of their premises managers.

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