RBS sells 918 pubs to Heineken

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/City-News/RBS-sells-918-pubs-to-Heineken

Ed Davey and Vince Cable take note.

It's business as usual among the bottom feeders of the tied pub sector.

A pathetic testament to the dying days of the tied pub sector - the blind leading the blind in a morally bankrupt game of boys playing with with toys they fundamentally don't understand.

"No Change For Tenants" what a total crock of nonsense. That's what Inntrepreneur said when S&N was buying the estate in 2007. That's what S&N said when they sold the estate to RBS in 2000. And that's what the fools who 'run' UK Pubsplc say now - nothing ever affects the tenant. Why is this? How come 'big business' can pass around large property estates from one clueless bunch of asset strippers to another over a period of 20 years - always making great shareholder value - and for the tenants 'never to be affected'. It's all lies, smoke and joke. The reason all this works is that the tenants are, as always, being shafted. The consequence is dilapidated and closing pubs all over the S&N estate; a significant contribution to the demise of the British pub culture and heritage.

"Trebles all round chaps - we never paying for them of course. No, that's the tenants' job."

Sapient were

Sorry about the date error up there.

This industry is a shameful shambles - a terrible reflection of everything that's wrong with UKPlc.

RBS makes an enormous loss and S&N buys back a toxic estate it lost before it became Heineken. God knows what the Dutch HQ must make of this ludicrous pub market nonsense they got stuck with when they bought an overvalued brewer.

Sapient were some months ago looking to sell this estate for £600 million+ to private equity interests, bigging it up, saying there is still great yield to be made out of investing in (crumbling, decrepit) tied pub estates in the UK.

Now basically Sapient have flogged it back to the people who owned it more than a decade ago, essentially to avoid embarrassment because there are no real buyers out there, and Heineken have been hoodwinked into buying back their own estate which has been catastrophically badly managed by a bunch of clueless suits who spend all their days in training seminars learning the new tiedpubestatespeak.

This success is actually a fake preening and strutting about a £180million discount off what they were saying was already great deal.

Profit generated out of thin air.

Ed Davey and Vince Cable can slap themselves on the back for encouraging this sort of behaviour - by allowing pubco's to continue shafting their tenants while ruining our national heritage.