What the Sunday papers said
Britain's big four supermarkets will be allowed to continue selling alcohol at rock-bottom prices despite complaints that they are driving pubs, corner shops and off-licences out of business. The Competition Commission has rejected calls for it to stop chains such as Tesco and Asda from offering beer, wine and other drinks at well below their true cost in an attempt to woo customers. A 16-month inquiry into the groceries market, led by commission chairman Peter Freeman, will rule out a ban when it publishes a report into claims that supermarkets' pricing decisions are putting smaller shops out of business. - Observer
By focusing on price and availability, Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill has missed opportunities to help solve the wider problems of alcohol misuse. Banning promotional models will cause considerable competition distortion in the UK market. This will be keenly felt in the border areas where Scots will be able to look over to England and Northern Ireland for promotional offers. Will Carlisle become to the Scots what Calais is to the English? It will be interesting to see the reaction of the UK government and to watch how these proposals fit within European Competition law. - Columnist Jeremy Beadles, writing in the Sunday Herald
JD Wetherspoon has started feeling the impact of the smoking ban on its alcohol sales but remains confident that sales of food and hot beverages will alleviate the impact of the regulation. Shares in the pub operator dived more than 6 per cent after it admitted that sales growth slowed to just over 1 per cent in August despite a surge in sales in June and July. The company said that the initial sales up-tick following the introduction of the smoking ban was driven by the bad weather over the summer, but that the August performance was more indicative of the trading environment in the wake of the smoking ban. It described like-for-like growth of more than one per cent as "a reasonably good result". - Independent On Sunday
Speculation that Carlsberg was looking to takeover Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) has been fuelled by a shake-up of the Danish group's controlling shareholder, the Carlsberg Foundation, and loose talk by its management. But last Friday, bid hopes suffered a setback, with the shares falling more than two per cent after Carlsberg chairman Povl Krogsgaard-Larsen said it had the financial muscle to buy S&N's half of their Russian joint-venture, Baltic Beverages Holding. 'We can definitely see the advantages of having 100 per cent ownership of BBH,' the chairman was quoted as saying. Analysts interpreted this as Carlsberg's sights being set on BBH, not S&N. - Observer
Baltika beer is not for sale, Scottish & Newcastle brewers said yesterday, in an attempt to kill speculation that Carlsberg, its partner in the brand's parent company Baltic Beverages Holding, was intent on making a bid for total control. The Scottish brewer was responding to statements from Carlsberg's new chairman, Povl Krogsgaard-Larsen, who told a Danish newspaper that his group had the financial muscle to buy out S&N from their eastern European joint venture. - The Herald
Gordon Ramsay, the Michelin-starred celebrity chef, is to open 10 pubs, quadrupling the number of his estate and eclipsing his chain of restaurants. Ramsay, who runs nine restaurants in London but will shortly be more of a pub landlord, believes the success of his first pub, the Narrow in Limehouse, can be replicated across the city. The move comes just weeks after Gordon Ramsay Holdings announced the acquisition of two more pubs, the Warrington in Maida Vale and the Devonshire House in Chiswick. Scotland On Sunday
