Caterer and Hotelkeeper – 30729
Break for the Border in Irish move
BREAK for the Border, the London restaurant and theme bar operator, is negotiating a deal to take over the Marino group, which runs four bar-restaurants and a hotel in Dublin.
Break for the Border has offered between £3.1m and £5.4m for Marino, dependent on future profits, with £2.4m payable in cash on completion of a due diligence report and the approval of Break for the Border's shareholders.
The acquisition would add to the company's portfolio a 170-seat restaurant, a 1960s-style diner, two café-bars and the four-star, 75-bedroom Grafton Plaza Hotel, which together made an estimated £1m profit last year.
Negotiations for the deal, which would more than double the London company's total number ofoutlets, began after the discovery last November that Marino was using the trading name Break for the Border for one of its outlets.
As restrictions on trading names do not reach across the Irish Sea, no legal action could be taken, and talks between the two companies started in December.
Marino's director Matt O'Dwyer denied that the Dublin Tex-Mex restaurant was a pirate copy of the London outlets, claiming the clash had been a coincidence.
The deal is expected to be completed in the next two months.
