Cains and able to buy back the business?

In what has been a quiet and singularly damp squib of a summer the Cains affair is at least building up a head of steam, judging by developments last week.

Pub closures and job losses are obviously regrettable, but having sorted out the wheat from the chaff in terms of realistic bidders, Cains' administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers is now getting down to the serious business of sorting out the front-runners from the also-rans.

When I heard that brothers Sudarghara and Ajmail Dusanj had tabled a bid to buy back the business they owned when it collapsed with debts in the tens of millions of pounds, I wasn't terribly surprised. After all, management of companies going into administration will often attempt to buy back the business they previously ran.

But this would not be a pre-packaged deal, that rather controversial method of putting a business into administration and immediately buying it back under a different name but with effectively the same owner and paying little heed to smaller creditors. In this case the main loser could be Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs, and, I suppose, further down the line taxpayers like you and me.

The situation regarding the brewery's freehold, owned by a company connected to the Dusanjs, makes matters complicated for anyone hoping to buy the site.

While perfectly legitimate, the requirement that any owner of the brewery other than the Dusanj brothers pays two-thirds more rent than a Dusanj-owned Cains would has been construed in certain quarters as somewhat prejudicial to any sale of the business.

Going further, someone suggested to me the lease had been 'sewn up' in the Dusanjs' favour, making any deal difficult.

A case of skilful tailoring? I'm sure the brothers wouldn't see it in anything like such a poor light.