M&B appoints key shareholder's lieutenant to board

Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) has appointed Richard McGuire, a representative of one of the managed pub group's leading shareholders Joe Lewis to its board as a non-executive director.

Lewis's investment vehicle Piedmont Inc. owns more than 93 million shares in M&B, representing 22.89 per cent of the voting rights.

The pub group said it had agreed with Piedmont that it can appoint one non-executive director when its economic interest in the business is higher than 16 per cent and two non-executive directors when its interest is above 22 per cent.

It is understood that while Piedmont has the right to appoint a second representative to the board of M&B it has not yet chosen to do so.

M&B has had experience of key investors nominating representatives to its board before. During property magnate Robert Tchenguiz's time as a major shareholder - before he sold his holding to Joe Lewis last year - two of his people were appointed to the pub group's board.

At the time Tchenguiz was seeking to split off M&B's valuable property portfolio from its operational side, an issue that led to a failed joint property venture and hedging losses of more than £200m.

It is not clear what Lewis' motives are, but his holding is significant enough to warrant the sort of concerns that surrounded Tchenguiz's stake.

M&B meanwhile said like-for-like trading for the eight weeks to July 11, 2009, was up 1.7 per cent across its estate.

Despite the existing economic difficulties M&B said it still expected to meet expectations for profits in the current financial year.