Punch Taverns
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Punch Taverns plc is the largest pub and bar operator in the United Kingdom, with around 9,500 tenanted and managed pubs. It is headquartered in the traditional brewing centre of Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire.
It floated on the London Stock Exchange in May 2002 and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. It bought Pubmaster for £1.93bn in November 2003, followed by InnSpired in 2004. The acquisition of larger rival Pubmaster, catapulted the operator to number two in the league. The acquisition took the group to more than 7,400 pubs and cemented Punch's position as a major pub operator. After adding the 2,859 pubs to its estate, it later gobbled up the InnSpired Group and Avebury.
In December 2005, it agreed to take over The Spirit Group for £2.679bn which had previously been owned by the private equity firms Blackstone, Texas Pacific and CVC Capital Partners.
This acquisition turned it into the largest pub operator in the country, overtaking solely tenated operator Enterprise Inns.
The deal reunited the managed and tenanted pubs of the original Punch Taverns, which was forged by the entrepreneur Hugh Osmond from the former Allied Domecq and Bass pub estates.
Mr Osmond snatched Allied Domecq's pubs from Whitbread in 1999 after a ferocious bid battle with the then brewer. After the deal, Punch Taverns spun off its managed pubs into a separate division, Punch Retail, which was later renamed Spirit Group.
Meanwhile, Spirit expanded when it acquired Scottish & Newcastle's 1,450-strong pub estate in 2003, beating off rival Mitchells & Butlers.
M&B, the operator of the All Bar One, O'Neills and Harvester chains, now wants to have a second stab at acquiring some of these pubs and has expressed interest in 300 to 400 pubs from Spirit's successful Chef & Brewer brand. Other possible bidders include Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries PLC and Greene King. Punch maintains that these brands are not for sale.
The new 24-hour drinking laws and a smoking ban in all enclosed public places from 2007 are a factor of Punch's highly acquisitive strategy.
Chronic overcapacity on the high street is another problem. This stems from an effort in the 1990s to regenerate town centres when local authorities allowed pub companies to move into cinemas and churches that had fallen into disuse. That led to new discount operators moving in. That's why the likes of Punch have focused on the "local boozer", running pubs in suburban and rural communities.
In a competitive market, size is important. Beer is still by far the biggest product sold in pubs, despite a 16 per cent decline in beer sales since 1979 and an explosion in food sales, which now accounts for 40 per cent of average pub revenues.
[edit] Old Orleans
In the summer of 2006 Regent Inns bought the Old Orleans bar chain from Punch Taverns. The deal for £26 million covered 31 units that Punch acquired, when it bought out the Spirit Group in January 2006.
