Wolves begins court action against Pubmaster

Related tags Takeover

Pubmaster's hostile battle to take over Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries (W&DB) has moved to the High Court. W&DB lodged a complaint against the pub company yesterday (July 16), accusing it of giving confidential information about its beers and br

Pubmaster's hostile battle to take over Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries (W&DB) has moved to the High Court.

W&DB lodged a complaint against the pub company yesterday (July 16), accusing it of giving confidential information about its beers and breweries to Bass Brewers and Carlsberg-Tetley (C-T).

The data was supplied to Pubmaster when it was carrying out due diligence in the run-up to its offer for W&DB, which was subsequently rejected.

The offer, which is through an acquisition vehicle called Pubmistress, has now turned into a hostile bid worth £453m.

W&DB alleges Bass Brewers and C-T were given details of beer customers, the value of free trade loans, margins, beer prices, and marketing activity.

It said that it lodged a case in the High Court to "prevent the dissemination by Pubmaster of further confidential information to W&DB's competitors or other unauthorised recipients".

Although it could take several months before the case comes before a judge, the brewer hopes the threat of litigation would make sure no confidential data was released.

But Pubmaster denied the allegations, claiming the court action was merely a ploy by W&DB chairman David Thompson to fight its hostile takeover bid.

Chief executive John Sands said: "We are confident of our position in relation to the dissemination of information.

"W&DB is becoming increasingly desperate and this latest announcement is a smokescreen from Mr Thompson, which is designed to cover up his lack of a credible alternative to Pubmistress' bid."

Pubmaster admitted it had sent a three-page document to Bass and C-T in an effort to find buyers for some or all of W&DB's four breweries if its bid succeeded.

However, it claimed this document contained only non-sensitive information such as size and the number of buildings at each brewery.

W&DB said it had tried and failed to obtain undertakings from Pubmaster not to provide "further confidential information" to third parties without its consent.

Mr Thompson said: "The fact that such commercially sensitive information has been distributed to our largest competitors is of very serious concern to us.

"We have no option but to prevent any further misuse of our data."