Robert Breare, chief executive, of Noble House Leisure, is looking to make more pub and restaurant acquisitions and will decided whether to float by the end of the year,

The owner of the likes of Jim Thompson bars, Yellow Rivers restaurants and more than 250 pubs, hopes to become even bigger than Arcadian, the quoted hotels business Breare sold for £100m in 1998.

Breare says in an interview with The Daily Telegraph he has been grown up about failing to buy Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries, which he stalked for months last year. Its no good getting emotional, he tells the newspaper. They didn't want to sell.

The Daily Telegraph 13/04/02 page 32