ON FT.com

http://on.ft.com/zoW8Ls

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2ac35c2e-45e1-11e1-9592-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1kVxbLyEy

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Pub closures are going to be going UP. The massive tied pub estates - mentioned above - are in disarray, operated by thousands of tenants whose profit margins have been systematically eroded by greedy landlords whose servicing of their irresponsibly acquired debt mountains depend on sapping every last drop of cash out of the cash cows of their leased estates where the tie allows them to be Rackmanesque in their own back yard with impunity.

The saying 'never doodoo on your own doorstep' has no meaning in the tied pub sector, that is how pubcos have been making their profits for the last twenty years and more.

To any lay person with an interest in the subject: You can tell a Tied Pub just by looking at it. By and large they are run down, dilapidated and look like you want to go to Starbucks. The reason is that the pubcos have over rented their estates - charged over market rent (they have been able to do this because they dominate the pub sector in such numbers that the market IS the tied pub rental market and all comparisons of 'Fair Rent' are made against other pubs whose rent has already been set too high) and pubcos have increased the wholesale price of beer, cartel fashion, to the whole of the tied estate well in excess of rpi and inflation and now beer to a tied pub costs DOUBLE what it does to a free of tie pub.

By and large Free of Tie Pubs are well looked after and attractive. They are either owned by the pubcos and managed by them i.e. they pay the staff and do not suck the business dry because it is their business not a lessee's...

The recent announcement by Ed Davey that 'self regulation is the way ahead' for pubcos is a travesty, a national disgrace that he, and his entire department' ought to be ashamed of. They have stubbornly laid out the financial funeral pyre for thousands more tied publicans and their families while sanctioning the boards of director fat cats ludicrous self serving pay packages as their businesses sink, inevitably into insolvency strangled by their own greed.