GRS would like estate to be 100% free-of-tie
He said the estate which currently stands at 180 pubs was likely to be sold off piecemeal and said the free-of-tie model worked well for individual buyers.
He said: “We have had approaches about the group and often it’s the same old suspects but it always comes down to price.
“It’s not a very attractive portfolio for someone who has got a tied estate because 75% of it is free-of-tie.
“If I were a family brewer and way under the threshold for MRO, it might well be that one or two pubs from this package would take my fancy. What you are likely to see is that because they’re free-of-tie a lot more people can buy them so it could be a tenant buying their pub, a big company or, what we often saw with the 300-odd we’ve sold, a barrister will buy it for his pension fund. Because its free-of-tie he doesn’t have to worry about providing a beer supply, he just charges a rent.”
Tenant demands
Kennedy said tenants were increasingly asking for free-of-tie leases and it suited his business model.
He said: “You can’t force anyone to switch over and nor would we want to so if someone says they are happy with a really low rent and a flexible way of paying it then that’s fine. There are also a few sites where it’s hard to see how we could come to agreement on what the right rent should be free-of-tie. But our preference would be to have a 100% free-of-tie estate.”
On the timescale for disposal of the entire estate, Kennedy said: ”Certainly sometime in the next 24 months, probably sooner rather than later. Whether that’s in one and twos or as part of a bigger package really depends on how the market is behaving.”
