Clarke returns fire at Osmond
Mitchells & Butlers boss Tim Clarke has hit back at Hugh Osmond three months after the Punch entrepreneur branded directors at Six Continents (6C) "complete muppets".
Mr Clarke pictured left, who at the time was chief executive at 6C, said Mr Osmond was not in a position to criticise, and returned fire by accusing him of driving a number of publicans out of business.
"His [Mr Osmond's] is a legacy of bankrupt lessees, boarded-up pubs and a general fly-by-night style of pub operation that characterised his tenure in pub management," Mr Clarke told The Publican Newspaper.
He is not the first to accuse Mr Osmond of treating licensees unfairly during his time at the helm of Punch. The financier immediately responded: "Tim Clarke is throwing stuff around which is not based on fact. When we bought the Bass lease business from them we had all the audited numbers going back for years.
"We tripled the amount of cash spent on the pubs. We had less closed pubs, less rental disputes and less tenant disputes - these are the facts."
Mr Osmond's "muppet" assertion came as the financier attempted to derail the break up of the Six Continents business in March. He wanted to lead a takeover of the entire £7bn group.
He failed, with a large majority of shareholders voting in favour of a split of the pubs from the hotels. "Having lost more than 98 per cent of the vote, I don't think too many people will have suffered a more humiliating defeat," said Mr Clarke. The vote paved the way for pubs chain Mitchells & Butlers and hotels business InterContinental Hotels Group.
The latest round of proverbial handbags came as Mitchells & Butlers unveiled lacklustre figures. Profits were flat at £191m on sales up one per cent to £793m.
Like-for-like sales in the pubs and bars arm, which includes Ember Inns and O'Neill's, were down 4.3 per cent. Like-for-likes in the pub-restaurant business, which includes Toby Carvery and Vintage Inns, fell 2.8 per cent.
"I don't really need to add to what I said three months ago," said Mr Osmond. "The latest M&B figures speak for themselves. This company has the biggest capital expenditure programme in the industry yet look at the performance.
"On every single performance measure Spirit Group has outperformed M&B, even though far less cash has been spent."
