Nomura sells on 130 former Bass pubs
Nomura International is to sell 130 of the 982 managed pubs it bought from Bass in February.
The first disposal emerged last week, with the sale of 13 pubs to St Albans-based Wizard Inns, in a deal thought to be worth more than £7m.
The 982 pubs, renamed the Voyager Pub Group, make up the bulk of the 988-strong estate bought by Nomura for £625m. Voyager plans to convert 850 of these from managed to tenanted status over the next two years.
John Denning, chief executive of Voyager, said the 130 being sold were likely to end up with other managed pub operators.
The 13 it is selling to Wizard are in the Midlands, London, the Home Counties and the South-east of England. The acquisitions will bring Wizard's estate to 47 pubs. All staff and managers will transfer to Wizard when the deal is completed later this month.
Wizard declined to say exactly how much it had spent to buy the pubs, beyond calling it a "significant" sum. Managing director Chris Hutt said that the sites had "bags of potential" and that the deal would increase Wizard's business by more than 30%.
Nomura's Principal Finance Group, with Royal Bank of Scotland, is also Wizard's principal backer, so the 13 pubs will stay within the Japanese investment bank's orbit.
David Liston, brewing analyst at stockbroker Gerrard, commented that it was a sellers' market at the moment. He suggested that possible candidates to cherry-pick the Voyager estate included Punch, Pubmaster and Enterprise Inns.
by Nic Paton
