Laurel on the acquisition trail

Laurel, the owner of 600 managed pubs, is to bolster its estate and will look to buy packages of managed business ranging between 20 and 100 pubs.

Chief executive Ian Payne confirmed the company was on the acquisition trail. "I have always said that once we sold Pub Partners [the tenanted division] we would look to increase the size of our managed business," he told the Publican.com.

Mr Payne declined to name targets. But he did say that the company would love to by the McMullen pubs, given the chance.

Members of the McMullen family are still torn between selling the business and running it as a going concern.

Laurel has abandoned plans to re-mortgage its estate through a bond issue. Before it disposed of its tenanted arm, Laurel had been preparing to restructure its debt through a £1bn bond securitisation.

The 1,860-strong tenanted division was recently sold to Enterprise Inns in a £876m deal. The lion's share of the cash from the Enterprise deal was used to significantly reduce debt.

Now the company has said it does not need to re-package its debt. The performance of managed houses is less predictable than tenanted businesses and therefore not appropriate for securitisation.

Mr Payne did not rule out a stock market listing but said it would not happen this year. "A flotation is an option," he said. "But it definitely won't be this year and it is just one of a number of options we are looking at."

A float would be one way of providing an exit for Morgan Grenfell Private Equity (MGPE), the parent company of Laurel.

Laurel was created a year ago with the £1.6bn purchase of Whitbread's pubs by MGPE, the private equity arm of Deutsche Bank.