NHPG, a limited company and subsidiary of Noble House Pub Company Group, has been placed with receivers at KPMG, who will handle the “closure of the company”.
The arm, which now comprises just six sites, was effectively a holding company for pubs and restaurants earmarked for disposal within the Noble House Pub Company Group.
Robert Breare, chief executive of Noble House, said: “We have advisers for this sort of thing and they thought this was the best thing to do. This is an old subsidiary company that needs to be closed down. It has just six pubs in it, three of which we are in advanced discussions with potential purchasers. There will be no job losses centrally or in the units.”
Of the six sites, three are closed and three are trading. The closed sites are Henry’s Cafe Bar in Tobacco Dock, Wapping; Long Island Ice Tea in Star City; and The Sphere, in Liverpool. All three sites were previously acquired from Scottish & Newcastle Retail.
The trading units are Arbuckles in Star City; The Wedgewood in Northampton; and Jim Thompson’s in Bristol.
The structure of Noble House is complex. Noble House Pub Company Group and Noble House Leisure Group are completely separate entities with separate shareholders and banking arrangements, with the common link of Robert Breare, who sites at the helm of both businesses.
Pub Company was formed as a vehicle for the purposes of acquiring pubs out of Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries, in a failed takeover attempt by Pubmaster just over three years ago. Noble would have acquired the managed pub arm of W&DB.
There are three limited companies within Pub Company Group.
The recently formed Pioneer Pub Company controls Noble’s “concept” pubs - gastro and destination food outlets. Orient Pub Company comprises mostly leasehold sites, most of which operate restaurant brands licensed from the separate Noble House Leisure Group. The third, NHPC, has been placed with KPMG.
In Noble House Leisure Group there are four companies: Restaurants, which operates sites mainly in London; Yellow River, which operates the eponymous chain; Jim Thompson; and Whirwind, which operates the Arbuckles chain.
Noble House is currently owed in excess of £5m by the directors of Valley Hill, which was placed into receivership earlier this year. Noble House assigned a 15-strong package of leasehold sites to Valley Hill prior to that, all of which were returned to Noble when Valley Hill went bust.
Breare told M&C: “The Valley Hill situation definitely caused a great deal more pain than we had anticipated. But we have cut a series of what I would consider to be fantastic deals in the last few weeks to move most of these sites on.
“I cannot be more definitive in the fact that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the health of the overall group.”
