Whitbread’s sale of its 3,000-strong pub estate to Morgan Grenfell Private Equity (MGPE) for £1.63bn paves the way for it to pursue aggressive growth of its main brands.
Whitbread has set aside about £300m to refurbish and expand Marriott, Travel Inn, David Lloyd Leisure and Brewers Fayre. It is talking with Marriott International about buying four or five of the UK Meridien hotels that Marriott hopes to acquire from Compass Group.
MGPE is expected to convert some of the managed houses to leased pubs and securitise the income streams later on. It expects to sell on most of the 193 branded high street sites. It faces the possibility of legal action from rival bidder Punch Taverns which claims MGPE had previously signed a non-compete clause preventing it from buying the pubs. MGPE called it “a joke”.
Financial Times 21/03/01 page 24 (Lex), page 26
The Daily Telegraph 21/03/01 page 33, page 35 (City Comment)
The Times 21/03/01 page 27, page 28 (Tempus)
The Independent 21/03/01 page 19
The Guardian 21/03/01 page 26
