A round-up of June's business headlines

Bids & Deals: A round-up of City and Business news which hit the headlines in June 2001

• Pubmaster prepares to target shareholders after launching £472m bid for Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries (W&DB) (June 4). Pubmaster launches hostile £453m bid after it is rebuffed by the brewer's board (June 11). Pubmaster says it has interest from potential buyers for all four of W&DB's breweries (June 25)
• JD Wetherspoon puts 14 of its smaller outlets on the market (June 4). It is named as the fastest-growing company in the UK (June 11). Its estate passes the 500 mark (June 25)
• The Government is ordered to reconsider its decision to block Interbrew's acquisition of Bass Brewers (June 4). The Office of Fair Trading carries out consultation to come up with new solutions (June 11)
• Old English Inns hopes for recovery despite flooding and foot-and-mouth leading to a fall in annual operating profits from £10.1m to £7.3m (June 4)
• Kingfisher Leisure receives new takeover bid from Springwood (June 4)
• Whitbread experiments with Café Rouge by rebranding a site as Rouge (June 4)
• Buyers line up to buy Britvic after it is formally put up for sale (June 4). AG Barr joins Pepsi, Matthew Clark, Cantrell & Cochrane and Cadbury Schweppes as candidates (June 25)
• Bass rolls out two new community pub concepts - Arena and Horizon (June 4)
• Operating profits are up for Conquest Inns and Lionheart Inns but parent Ann Street Group suffers a 16 per cent fall in annual profits to £96m (June 4). Ann Street Group buys Bass' Channel Islands pubs and wholesaling operation for £10m (June 25)
• Dukedom Leisure buys new sites and rolls out Aruba pub brand (June 4)
• Royal Bank of Scotland pumps £8m into its pub estate managed by Pyramid (June 4)
• Eldridge Pope focuses openings programme on roll-out of Toad café bars (June 4). Chief executive Peter Phillipson quits and ex-Whitbread restaurants boss Michael Johnson is lined up to replace him (June 25)
• Dalgety Taverns raises £8.5m to help it expand its estate in Scotland (June 4)
• Wholesaler Glamorgan Beer Company launches business to run real ale pubs (June 4)
• Massive invests in new outlets for its Charbar and Tup concepts (June 4)
• New research into consumers' attitudes towards pub-going is to be unveiled at The Publican Conference in November (June 4)
• Ridleys plans to expand its estate and increase beer production (June 4)
• Quiz supplier Jumbo Quiz goes into liquidation (June 11)
• Guinness settles an industrial dispute in Ireland that threatened beer supplies (June 11)
• The Pub Estate Company invests £3m in improvements to more than 100 of its pubs (June 11)
• Laurel Pub Company to transfer 200 former Whitbread managed houses to lease and puts 34 leased pubs and 36 managed houses, including the Dôme chain, on the market (June 11).
• Enterprise Inns is attacked by National Association of Licensed House Managers over "strong arm" tactics in transferring Laurel houses to tenancy (June 25)
• Voyager Pub Group begins transfer of 850 of 988 former Bass managed houses to lease and plans to dispose of the rest (June 11)
• A management team including Joel Cadbury wins battle for Groucho Club's bars with £11.67m bid (June 11)
• Corney & Barrow opens its first new bar in three years despite worries about slowdown in the London economy (June 11)
• Award-winning High Holborn bar put on the market after going into administration (June 11)
• Criterion Asset Management wins new clients through increasing trend for pub companies to outsource back-office services (June 11)
• Fuller's develops new modern pub brand, Whistle & Flute (June 11)
• Punch Group considers splitting its leased and managed divisions and floating them on the stock exchange (June 11)
• Belhaven Brewery reports 11th year of unbroken growth with a 17.4 per cent increase in annual pre-tax profits to £7.46m (June 11)
• Freedom Brewing Company is to be restructured under new managing director after losing founder Philip Parker (June 25)
• Young's considers joint bid for pubs with another regional brewer. It faces a new attack from shareholder Guinness Peat Group, which wants it to go private. Its annual pre-tax profits rise by over 20 per cent to £10.3m (June 25)
• Town pubs and national ale sales improve for Jennings Brothers despite a continuing slump in Cumbria because of foot-and-mouth (June 25)
• Like-for-like sales at Whitbread's Brewers Fayre and Beefeater pubs improve (June 25)
• Chorion buys four London bars with late-night licences, including 10 Covent Garden to help owner City Bars and Restaurants come out of administration (June 25)
• Burtonwood Brewery is to continue with steady investment in refurbishments and acquisitions after annual pre-tax profits rise by 14 per cent to £7.21m (June 25)
• Scottish & Newcastle sells 432 managed houses to Enterprise Inns for £263m, which will be transferred to tenancy, and another 214 to Noble House Leisure for £97.1m (June 25)
• Greene King appoints Rooney Anand from food company Sara Lee to head beers and brewing (June 25)
• Buyers line up to bid for amusement machine company Leisure Link (June 25)
• Yates Group begins preliminary talks which may lead to the business being sold. Luminar is said to be the most likely buyer (June 25).