Christie & Co brokers a sale for Heartstone Inns to Punch Pubs
Specialist business property advisor, Christie & Co has brokered the sale of seven pubs on behalf of Heartstone Inns to Punch Pubs & Co.
The pubs are spread across the Southern England and include The Cricketers, The Diggers Rest, The King Alfred, The Owl, The Pelican, The Bathurst Arms and The Talbot. Heartstone will continue to operate the remaining eight large food-led freehold managed pubs under their ownership.
Heartstone were looking to sell their non-core managed house assets which were more suited to lease conversion and focus on their remaining great quality and well performing sites.
Punch are continuing to acquire single and portfolio assets throughout the UK to integrate and expand their managed and leased estate. Punch Chief Executive, Clive Chesser comments, “We are pleased to welcome seven wonderful pubs into the Punch family and look forward to working together with our new publicans and their teams. We would like to thank Heartstone Inns, which has been working closely with us to ensure a smooth transition for everyone. We have plans to invest in all seven pubs during 2020, providing them with industry-leading support to allow them to flourish while ensuring they continue to operate at the very heart of their communities. We will provide further updates as these plans progress but in the meantime the pubs remain open and trading as usual.”
James Birch, co-founder and Managing Director of Heartstone Inns said, “We are delighted to have sold seven of our pubs to Punch. As a result, we can continue to develop and expand our remaining estate of large, food-led, managed pubs. We would like to thank our transferring staff for their loyalty and hard work and wish them, their customers and Punch the very best for the future.”
Neil Morgan, Senior Director – Pubs & Restaurants at Christie & Co adds, “We had strong interest in the portfolio from a range of buyers including regional pub companies and private equity backed multiple operators. We are currently working on a number of similar size portfolios and look forward to announcing these shortly.”
The pubs were sold for an undisclosed sum which included six freehold and one leasehold asset.
For further information on this press release, contact:
Fiona Fieldhouse, Head of Corporate Communications
P: 020 7227 0793 or E: fiona.fieldhouse@christie.com
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