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Punch Taverns

Punch Taverns plc
Public
Traded as
Industry Pubs
Founded 1997
Headquarters Burton upon Trent, England, UK
Key people
Stephen Billingham
(Executive Chairman)
Duncan Garrood
(CEO)
Neil Griffiths
(COO)
Revenue £420.8 million (2015)
£183.9 million (2015)
£ loss 82.6 million (2015)
Number of employees
409 (2015)
Website www.punchtaverns.com

Punch Taverns plc is a pub and bar operator in the United Kingdom, with around 3,500 leased and tenanted pubs. It is headquartered in the traditional brewing centre of Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire. It is listed on the and is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index.

In December 2016 the company accepted a takeover offer of £403m from a private equity fund, Patron Capital, acting in concert with Heineken International.

The company was established by former PizzaExpress head Hugh Osmond and Café Rouge founder Roger Myers in 1997 when they bought the Bass Brewery portfolio of public houses. In 1999 Punch purchased Allied Domecq's pubs for £3 billion, beating a rival bid from Whitbread. After the deal, Punch spun off its managed pubs into a separate division, Punch Retail, which was later renamed Spirit Group.

In 2002 Punch demerged the Spirit Group and then floated itself on the . Punch acquired its larger rival Pubmaster in November 2003 for £168m, which included taking on Pubmaster's £1bn debt; the move took the group to more than 7,000 pubs and made it at the time the largest pub operator in the UK. After completing this deal Punch later bought InnSpired Inns plc, and then Avebury Taverns.

Meanwhile, Spirit Group (at that time independent from Punch Taverns) expanded when it acquired Scottish & Newcastle's 1,450-strong pub estate in 2003, beating off rival Mitchells & Butlers.

In September 2005, Spirit Group sold its "City Nights" portfolio of in excess of 180 pubs and clubs, en-bloc, to Alchemy - the financial backers behind the newly formed Tattershall Castle Group (TCG).


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