'Enterprise Inns poised to agree new bank loan'

Enterprise Inns is close to agreeing a long-awaited refinancing of its £1bn bank loan, staving off fears that shareholders might be asked to make an emergency injection of cash. Shares in Enterprise fell 11 per cent on Friday amid worries that it would not be able to strike a deal with its consortium of lenders. Enterprise has been negotiating with its banks for more than six months. Insiders expect the deal could be announced in the next few weeks, and possibly as early as this Tuesday when it publishes interim financial results. A deal would be seen as a coup for the company and its chief executive, Ted Tuppen. - Sunday Times​

Pubs company Enterprise Inns, which posts interim results on Tuesday, has seen improving conditions despite times of "unprecedented challenge" for the industry. The group, which had around 7,400 pubs as of September last year, said in March that levels of support given to its struggling landlords was higher than a year ago although these costs are beginning to fall. - Scotsman​

Annual figures on Thursday from Luminar - Britain's biggest nightclub operator - come after a difficult year for the group in which the recession hit demand from cash-strapped clubbers. Luminar issued a profits warning in January, and the misery of the year just gone is expected to have seen underlying pre-tax profits slump to around £4m from £20.3m last year, according to Numis Securities. - Scotsman​

Raucous end-of-exam student parties in Cambridge are facing a new police clampdown after a series of drunken incidents. Police in the city have issued a direct warning to undergraduate drinking societies and organisers of other student celebrations that they could be breaking the law. The warning, timed to coincide with the traditional May Ball season, comes amid increasing alarm over student end-of-term antics at the university. - Daily Telegraph​

Students in Cornwall are taking part in a two-day relay race around the Cornish coast carrying a bottle of beer as their baton. The Rally4Haiti Challenge is raising money for Cornwall-based international disaster relief charity Shelterbox. Fifty students in groups carried beer bottles while jogging, swimming, cycling, walking and kayaking 230 miles around the Cornish coastline. - BBC News​

Pork scratchings are the ultimate pub food, far superior to the dreary, one-note dry roasted peanut. Even crisps are unworthy to worship at their feet. There's the initial, often terrifying, tooth-cracking crunch. Then the soft underside - a part I used to despise, but now adore - which o¬ffers welcome contrast, soothing the initial blow and spreading piggy goodness around the mouth. A hint of swine, a rush of salt and it's gone, washed down with a gulp of good ale. - Tom Parker-Bowles, writing in the Mail on Sunday​