S&NPE licensees wary after takeover
Licensees are still waiting to find out how Heineken and Carlsberg's £7.6bn deal to takeover Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) will affect them.
After a four month wrangle S&N finally agreed terms to sell the business for 800p a share on January 25.
But while Heineken chief executive Jean-François van Boxmeer said he was "very excited" about S&N's 2,200 strong managed pub division - Scottish &Newcastle Pub Enterprises (S&NPE) - licensees are keen to find out what impact the deal will have on their businesses.
Heather Page, licensee of the Lamb Inn, in Worthing, West Sussex, said: "I don't think there has been a tremendous amount of information about it and the news came as quite a surprise to me.
"It would be nice to get some inside information rather than reading about it in the papers.
"If the deal was to change things completely I wouldn't be staying.
"This is my seventh pub and I have always worked for Scottish & Newcastle and I wouldn't want things to change."
Nick Donald, licensee of the King's Wark in Edinburgh, said: "We are still really waiting to find out but the initial reaction I have had from S&N is that not much is going to change.
"There will be a bit of development in terms of brands but from what I have heard we don't expect much change and until we hear anything to the contrary we will carry on as usual."
Other licensees told The Publican they had yet to receive information about the deal from S&N.
Heineken's van Boxmeer said it was too early to say whether the brewer, which now owns S&N's UK operations, will look to buy more pubs or sell any of the pubs in the S&NPE estate.
