Enterprise Inns raises £13m in latest sale and leaseback auction
Enterprise Inns has raised more than £13m by selling the freeholds of another batch of its London pubs at auction.
The pubco plans to lease back the pubs, which it has sold through auctioneers Allsop, on 35 year leases.
The latest collection of pubs includes the Blind Beggar in London's East End, the site of an infamous gangland murder in the 1960s involving the Kray twins.
One of the 10 pubs up for grabs, the Old Ship in Hackney, East London, did not sell. It remains available for £1.25m.
The sales are the latest in Enterprise's strategy to tap into a positive property market in the capital, said chief operating officer Simon Townsend today.
"This is a way of taking advantage of the property market in London and generating cash at the same time," he said.
Townsend said the suggestion that Enterprise was 'mortgaging the future' through selling off some of its pubs in this way was "categorically not the case. We are totally committed to the pub and the individual tenant".
In interim results published last week Enterprise said it had raised £49m through selling 26 pubs via sale and leaseback deals in the first half of its financial year.
It indicated it planned to sell 30 pubs under similar arrangements in its second half.
The pubs sold today are:
Belushi's, Camden: Sold for £1.8m (guide price £1.25m - £1.35m) Yield: 5.28 per cent
The Commander, Bayswater: Sold for £2.2m (guide price: £1.4m - £1.5m) Yield: 4.77 per cent
A Bar 2 Far, Tooting: Sold for £1.26m (guide price: £1.15m - £1.25m) Yield: 6.75 per cent
The One Tun, Hatton Garden: Sold for £1.2m (guide price: £1.15m - £1.25m) Yield: 7.08 per cent
The Rosslyn Arms, Hampstead: Sold for £1.73m (guide price: £1.2m - £1.3m) Yield: 5.2 per cent
Nell of Old Drury, Covent Garden: Sold for £1.68m (guide price: £1.35m - £1.45m) Yield: 5.95 per cent
The Grafton Arms, Kentish Town: Sold for: £1.27m (guide price: £1.15m - £1.25m) Yield: 6.69 per cent
The Blind Beggar, Stepney: Sold for: £1.26m (guide price: £1.2m - £1.3m) Yield: 7.54 per cent
The Old Ship, Hackney: did not sell
The Town of Ramsgate, Wapping: Sold for: £1.11m (guide price: £950,000 - £1.05m) Yield: 6.33 per cent
