Greene King confident of £30m cost synergies following Spirit Pub acquisition

THE new owner of Staffordshire-based pubco Spirit Pub has said it plans to generate at least £30m in cost synergies as a result of the £760m acquisition.

Rival pubco Greene King said it had also exchanged contracts on all 16 of the pubs it was required to sell by the Competition and Markets Authority as a result of the protracted takeover of the Burton-upon-Trent group, which was first proposed last autumn.

Suffolk-based Greene King said it now expected the acquisition to complete in early October.

Following the acquisition, Greene King now employs around 42,000 people across both its own and the Spirit operations, which comprise 3,100 pubs, restaurants and hotels across England, Wales and Scotland, of which around 1,800 are retail pubs, restaurants and hotels and around 1,300 tenanted, leased and franchised pubs. Its leading retail brands include Hungry Horse, Fayre & Square, Old English Inns (OEI), Chef & Brewer, Eating Inn, Flaming Grill and Loch Fyne Seafood & Grill.

In its AGM statement, Greene King said: “Although it is still early in the process, the integration of Spirit is going well and we remain confident of generating at least £30m of cost synergies. We exchanged contracts on all 16 of the pubs that we were required to sell by the Competition and Markets Authority and we expect completion in early October 2015.
 
“We will provide a further update on the integration at our interim results on December 2, 2015.”