RBS closes in for £700m pubs sale

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Forums/News-Article-Comments/RBS-closes-in-for-700m-pubs-sale

Breathtaking.

RBS's Galaxy estate? More like RBS's pie in the sky Black Hole.

RBS have been touting around this galactic fleet of 900 fading red dwarfs for years. To no takers. Only a couple of months ago, if memory serves, news was that RBS had pushed out this toxic galaxy of pubs to Sapient Corporate Finance with a price tag of £600million (Remember that? - Sapient was parping off a load of GUFF about what a great time it is for Private Equity to be buying into the tied pub sector because there's still such great yields to be had out of these estates by nailing lessees to the floor).

The value attached to the sale is fascinating to note. While property prices in feet on the ground Real World still fall, values in Outer Space Pub La La Land appear to continue to rise in the worst recession EVER. With pubs particularly closing faster than ever before, and with more than half the recorded failures in the pub sector being tied leases, it makes sense then that the average price per pub in this fire sale appears to have gone UP about £90K since Sapient got involved.

After the best part of thirty years deep into the disaster of the Beer Orders the last tatters of the Emperor's New Clothes are still being paraded around and, even though the whole business model of the tied pub sector has been pummelled in the public stocks, the lumpen hulk of the holed galactic starship keeps circling towards the inevitable end game of a financial black hole. And it looks like people might still be buying into the dream.

Who will be the space cowboys holding the reins when the galaxy finally gets sucked into oblivion will be something to behold.