S&NPC ditches ex-Tchenguiz pubs

Scottish & Newcastle Pub Company (S&NPC) has given up the management contract on 207 pubs, mostly located in Scotland.

The pubs were formerly owned by Robert Tchenguiz's investment vehicle R20 in a company called Retail & Licensed Properties (R&LP).

Tenants of the pubs are being told this week about the move which takes effect on 1 November.

Licensed Solutions and LT Pub Management will take over the management of the estate.

A total of 137 of the pubs were acquired by Tchenguiz in 2006 from Enterprise Inns after it decided to pull out of Scotland.

R&LP was also made up 46 pubs that it acquired from Scottish & Newcastle and a few from a subsidiary of Globe Pub Company, another Tchenguiz vehicle which is now called Blue Star and owned by Heineken.

R&LP paid a total of around £150m for 183 pubs. Earlier this month, the Morning Advertiser revealed that Heineken UK is to merge its Scottish & Newcastle Pub Company (S&NPC) pub management division with its on-trade beer division in a move that is likely to mean 50 job losses.

Smooth handover​

"LS and LT are well known and experienced leased pub operators," an S&NPC spokesman said. "The change in managing agent will take effect on 1st November 2010. Heineken will continue to supply beer to the pubs.

"The plan to transfer management of the R&L pubs formed an important consideration in our recent restructuring announcement, and is entirely consistent with our desire to simplify our business model and focus on a high quality well supported pub estate.

"Our priority over the next few days is continuity of support for lessees and a smooth handover to LSLT."

Billy Buchanan, chief executive of LT Pub Management, said: "We are very pleased to have formed a business partnership with the Licensed Solutions team and we look forward to working with Retail & Licensed Properties in support of their tenanted/leased estate of in excess of 200 pubs."

Paul Whitford, managing director of Licensed Solutions, added: "We have a very good match of strengths between Licensed Solutions and the team headed up by Billy Buchanan, at LT Pub Management. We all hope and expect that this will lead to other business partnerships with them in the future."

Shrinking the estate​

It means the end of S&NPC as a stand-alone pub company. Industry sources suggest that the S&NPC estate is set to shrink by many hundreds of pubs from its current size of just under 2,000 pubs.

The aAim estate of around 270 pubs is one part of the estate that is tipped to move to different management.

It is thought that S&NPC is set to shrink to around 1300 pubs centred on the RBS estate of 800 or so pubs and Blue Star, which has around 420 pubs.

The move means that S&NPC managing director Willie Crawshay and operations director Kim Francis are looking for "new career opportunities".

The company argued that "better alignment with our independent free trade operation will unlock new opportunities for both channels and ensure a good exchange of retailing skills, brand opportunities and synergies for the integrated channels".

The current five S&NPC geographic regions will be reformed to align with Heineken UK's three on-trade areas.

Chris Moore, currently S&NPC property director, has been appointed to the new role of trading director, S&NPC. Moore will report to Lawson Mountstevens as existing managing director on-trade.