Marston’s creates new division to handle pub disposals

The operating division is headed by Philip Barnett, who was operations director at Marston’s Beer & Pub Company until the end of last year. His new job title is operations director — disposals, reporting to chief financial officer Andrew Andrea.

It’s understood that Marston’s hopes to dispose of the pubs over several years. At its full-year results in November, the company said it anticipated that disposal proceeds would be around £30m to £40m per year for the next few years and the pubs up for disposal would be a mixture of traditional and franchised sites.

Marston’s said at the time: “We regularly review the traditional estate and the franchised estate to ensure that pubs that do not have a sustainable future are sold. The majority of these are likely to be sold for alternative use.”

In recent months a number of Marston’s disposal packages have been placed on the market, including a package of 50 sites with Christie+Co, 30 with Fleurets, and 16 with CBRE.

The company said last year it was on-track to build another 20 to 25 pubs in 2013, and it expects this investment to remain at a similar level over the next few years.