MMSI emerges as surprise Cains bidder
Glasgow-based investment firm Marketing Management Services International (MMSI) has emerged as a surprise bidder to buy the Cains brewing operation and pub estate.
The Scottish firm, which rescued the Arran Brewery on the Isle of Arran from administration in June this year, confirmed it had made a bid for the whole company to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
MMSI managing director Gerald Michaluk told the Morning Advertiser: "I am interested in the whole shooting match - the brewery and the pubs.
"We would keep the brewery open. It should all be about local Liverpool beers for the people of Liverpool brewed by the people of Liverpool."
However, Michaluk admitted that the waters had been muddied somewhat by revelations that the Dusanj brothers own the freehold of the brewery in a separate family trust with 10 freehold pubs. The pair may also own the brewery equipment.
"We need to go back and clarify a few things," said Michaluk. "Everything may not be what it seems."
The Dusanj brothers are favourites to re-emerge in control of the brewery given the circumstances.
Cains had been paying around £500,000 in rent on the brewery. Before its collapse, Cains operated about 115 pubs, of which about 85 are leasehold. Most of the pubs operate as managed houses but about a dozen trade under a tenancy model.
Michaluk said he was only interested in the remaining freehold pubs.
The administrators shut 24 leasehold pubs it considered to be unviable at the end of last week.
PwC said it had received about a dozen bids for various parts of the business.
