Exclusive: Graham Jones to join Stonegate in February 2011

Sources at Stonegate Pub Company, which completed the acquisition of 333 pubs from Mitchells & Butlers at the start of the week, report that Graham Jones, the current Punch operations director, will join the company in February 2011.

"Graham is a very talented operations director, " said the source. "We are not sure what his job title will be at the moment — we only started the company on Monday.

"There will be other people joining the company but for the moment there are a few people on interim contracts."

Stonegate has established a headquarters on a Birmingham business park and currently has an headquarters staff of 49 full-timers.

The total staff across 333 pubs is around 5,000. Mitchells & Butlers is offering a nine month transitional management service at the 333 pubs, which include student and late-night venues.

Earlier this week, the Morning Advertiser revealed that talks over merging Stonegate Pub Company with Town & City Pub Company are making very slow progress.

Stonegate's chairman Ian Payne is also chairman of Yates's operator Town & City and a merger of the two wet-led operators has been mooted.

Morning Advertiser sources suggest that the Icelandic bank Kaupthing, which owns Town & City Pub Company alongside Commerzbank, is proving a little unreceptive to the merger idea.

A source said: "It's still an opportunity waiting to be done but in all honesty it's very hard to call (whether a deal can be done) — it's certainly very far from being complete (at the moment)."

Ian Payne is filling the de facto role of executive chairman at Stonegate while talks about a possible merger with Town & City Pub Company are "on-going".