"The leased market is very exciting from a retail perspective." No it isn't. It's terrifying.

"Here’s a low-cost opportunity to be your own boss.” Quoting that laughable line straight from pubco manual proves that Whitside has been deep soaked in pubco rhetoric. Figures just don't stack up. £5K a week is comfortably over the borderline for any tied pub. They cannot carry the pubco baggage of fierce rent and double or more free trade prices.

They are in so much debt they have to keep quoting the £1.6 million a month support. It's NOT support - it's holding back the baying hounds of benkruptcy. There's no redevelopment plan in place in any of the pubco estates, there's nothing anyone could describe as true 'rescue' available. Pubcos major issue is that they are not and have not been 'operators' they are rent collectors and bean counters shuffling items in and out of slots called pubs while revaluing their bricks and mortar according to sub prime principles. No matter what they say about being prudent in their borrowing habits and making comparisons between their estates and sleepy suburban domestic mortgages they aren't in a position to support their estates because all the money they earn out of their pubs is already earmarked for repaying massive tranches of debt.

No matter what kind of listening skills Whiteside has, no matter what kind of polish he's been given there's no way he, or anyone else, can buff this leaking bucket he's picked up into a shiny pail. He'll need a budget of at LEAST £20,000,000 to turn that crock into a pot of gold - that's assuming he knows how to spend it well.