According to the Morning Advertiser, the Scottish company that rescued Isle of Arran Brewery has bid for all of Cains (whatever that means). The brewery would stay open.
They are confident of success. The story is here.
The Glasgow Herald more detailed version is here.
4 hours ago
6 comments:
Well now, this gets even more interesting. I see that the brewery was paying £500,000 a year rent. Presumably to the owners who were...the Dusanj brothers. I'm sure that helped the cash flow enormously.
You know, I realise that the Dusanjs have been portrayed as heroes but the more that comes to light about the financial arrangements surrounding Cains you do begin to see that they never took much of a risk when they "saved" Cains. Indeed, paying themselves £500,000 a year rent could arguably be said to have fatally weakened the company.
“Curiouser and curiouser!”
I'm disappointed that the owners of Cains engaged in such sharp - if legal - practice, but I'm less concerned about whether the bank or the government get their money than I am about the licencees of local Cains pubs who have lost their businesses and whose staff have been made redundant; their pictures are in our local papers here in Merseyside. Playing fast and loose with people's livelihoods is unforgiveable.
Why did Cains pay £1 million to sponsor the City of Culture 2008 if they were in such a financial mess? It look like putting prestige before financial probity. It would be an unpleasant irony if Liverpool's reign as City of Culture was indirectly responsible for the loss of jobs and pubs.
I hope that the existence of several bids for the company may mean that the brewery and and at least some of the pubs and jobs have a chance of being rescued.
Yes indeed. In suspect it remains politically incorrect in some CAMRA circles to criticise anything to do with Cains but as you say jobs and businesses are going to the wall as a result of this. And I won't even mention the £300,000 that the CAMRA Members Investment Club has lost...
I know the Independent Family Brewers of Britian were criticised for refusing Cains membership but I wonder if they knew more about the financial set up here than they felt able to say at the time...
I'd hold off on criticising the financial set up until the full picture emerges. It's been a while since I did my Business Finance module, but the setup looks like a sensible (and not that unusual) separation of core brewery business and property business.
I could be wrong. I'm only an accountant, and as everyone knows, they shouldn't have anything to do with breweries :-)
OpCo/PropCo structure! This takes me back! Not very far, but it takes me back.
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