Well, that was fun, wasn't it? Lots of personal abuse, everybody's reputations held up for criticism, impassioned speeches and a vote which looked as if the underdog might just pull it off – until it was revealed that the 24.82% of Six Continents shares Hugh Osmond and his team lined up at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre to back delaying the vote on the group's demerger was just among those shareholders actually present, and a whopping 90% of SixC shares had already been voted in proxy in favour of the demerger.
So – plenty of heat and noise, much entertainment for the watchers, but in the end, was it all a waste of time and money? Osmond's team alone is reckoned to have spent £8m in its bid to trip up the SixC demerger, and then missed with its tackle by quite a margin. Now the founder of Punch Taverns says even a bid for SixC's demerged pubs side, Mitchells & Butlers, which many felt was his true target anyway, is low on his "to do" list.
Osmond and his team at Capital Management and Investment must always have known that the chances of persuading shareholders not to break up SixC but to sell it in one piece were low, that everybody would be suspicious their motive was simply to try to get the pub assets cheaply. Clearly it seemed to CMI a gamble worth taking £8m wagered on a venture that they must have calculated might bring them in very much more than that. However, while this particular shark has swum off after having its nose bashed firmly with an oar, there are plenty more gliding towards the soon-to-be independent bodies of InterContinental Hotels and Mitchells & Butlers. Both may not last even as long as Six Continents did as a corporate entity once it changed its name from Bass, before they fall to take-over and/or break-up. Despite the slagging Osmond gave to SixC's pub brands when asked about them by inquiring journalists, Mitchells & Butlers will be inheriting a terrific portfolio of concepts. The hotels side looks even more delicious, with Holiday Inns and InterContinental among its temptations for other big hotels groups.
Thus the company that was once, last century, the biggest brewer in the world, then Britain's biggest pub owner and finally the second-biggest hotel company in the world seemingly evaporates before our eyes. Even if Hugh Osmond's attempt to stop the demerger had succeeded, he would no more have been able to find any proper synergy between being a global hotels company and a regional pubs and restaurants company than the present management did: indeed, Six C's Roger North admitted that being a pubs-and-hotels conglomerate had actually hampered the group, with talks on a number of nil-premium mergers with other hotel companies last year failing because of the difficulty of valuing the hotels with pubs still attached. Ironic, perhaps, that something put together over 40 or more years should be worth more pulled apart again; but as we journalists say, it gives us something to write about.
So – plenty of heat and noise, much entertainment for the watchers, but in the end, was it all a waste of time and money? Osmond's team alone is reckoned to have spent £8m in its bid to trip up the SixC demerger, and then missed with its tackle by quite a margin. Now the founder of Punch Taverns says even a bid for SixC's demerged pubs side, Mitchells & Butlers, which many felt was his true target anyway, is low on his "to do" list.
Osmond and his team at Capital Management and Investment must always have known that the chances of persuading shareholders not to break up SixC but to sell it in one piece were low, that everybody would be suspicious their motive was simply to try to get the pub assets cheaply. Clearly it seemed to CMI a gamble worth taking £8m wagered on a venture that they must have calculated might bring them in very much more than that. However, while this particular shark has swum off after having its nose bashed firmly with an oar, there are plenty more gliding towards the soon-to-be independent bodies of InterContinental Hotels and Mitchells & Butlers. Both may not last even as long as Six Continents did as a corporate entity once it changed its name from Bass, before they fall to take-over and/or break-up. Despite the slagging Osmond gave to SixC's pub brands when asked about them by inquiring journalists, Mitchells & Butlers will be inheriting a terrific portfolio of concepts. The hotels side looks even more delicious, with Holiday Inns and InterContinental among its temptations for other big hotels groups.
Thus the company that was once, last century, the biggest brewer in the world, then Britain's biggest pub owner and finally the second-biggest hotel company in the world seemingly evaporates before our eyes. Even if Hugh Osmond's attempt to stop the demerger had succeeded, he would no more have been able to find any proper synergy between being a global hotels company and a regional pubs and restaurants company than the present management did: indeed, Six C's Roger North admitted that being a pubs-and-hotels conglomerate had actually hampered the group, with talks on a number of nil-premium mergers with other hotel companies last year failing because of the difficulty of valuing the hotels with pubs still attached. Ironic, perhaps, that something put together over 40 or more years should be worth more pulled apart again; but as we journalists say, it gives us something to write about.
