Weekend press round up, 10-11 September

Please see below our roundup of the weekend newspapers: M&B eats up Cajun chain The Mitchells & Butlers pub group is expanding on the high street with a deal to buy Old Orleans restaurants. M&B, where Joe Lewis, the billionaire investor, is the largest shareholder, has acquired the eight-strong chain from what is left of the Regent Inns leisure operation. It is likely that M&B, which is searching for both a new chairman and chief executive, will convert the Old Orleans sites to its existing brands. These include Browns and Harvester restaurants. It is not clear what M&B has paid for the business, but analysts suggested it could be as little as £2m to £3m. Regent Inns had bought Old Orleans from Spirit, the pub group, for £26m in 2006. Three years later, Regent went through a pre-pack administration, emerging as Intertain. It owns Walkabout bars. The sale of Old Orleans comes as Ping Pong, the dim sum chain, looks at raising funds for expansion. It is working with advisers Baker Tilly. Talks are at an early stage and sources said that while initial discussions have focused on raising debt, all options, including the possible sale of a stake in the business, would be considered. Ping Pong has 11 outlets in London, as well as sites in Washington DC, Sao Paulo and Dubai. The Sunday Times It may not be trebles all round when Diageo, the spirits group, announces that it is parting company with its senior non-executive director. Lord Hollick, who has sat on the company’s board for 10 years, will leave next month. The one-time media baron was dubbed non-alco-Hollick when he closed the staff bar at the Daily Express. Hacks at another investment, trade publisher Miller Freeman, also went thirsty. Now he may have more time to spend at the £25,000 timeshare he bought at Gleneagles, Diageo’s luxury hotel and golf course in Perthshire. The Sunday Times Bank shake-up to be slow George Osborne will back a controversial plan tomorrow to ring-fence retail banks, but warn that he will not rush the reforms into law. He is expected to snub Liberal Democrat demands to include the changes in the Financial Services Bill now before Parliament. Treasury sources said the reforms might take three years to implement. Sources said Osborne would apply the scheme in a way that did not damage the banks’ recovery from the crisis or the City’s attractiveness as a banking location. The delay is likely to appease business and bank critics, who have claimed the proposals risk cutting off lending when the economy most needs it. The Sunday Times £10m worth of city Z beds Two former Thistle Hotel executives are launching a budget chain to compete with the likes of Travelodge in cities. Bev King, former chief operating officer of Thistle, and Richard Meehan, who was head of corporate finance, will open the first Z hotel in Soho next month. The 85 ensuite rooms will cost about £100 a night. The business is funded by wealthy individuals who have committed more than £10m to the first wave of hotels. The Sunday Times RBS plans property shake-up Royal Bank of Scotland is aiming to break up its £37bn commercial real estate portfolio into up to 15 separate joint-venture funds as it seeks to return value to the taxpayer. The bank is hoping to attract billions from investors willing to take a long-term view of the portfolio, which includes interests in property developments from supermarkets to hotels. RBS has been badly hit by its investment in property developments, both commercial and residential, with some dropping by up to 90% in value recently. An insider said the bank was looking for partners to take a 50% stake in the funds. The portfolio also contains properties owned outright by the bank, including a pub real estate division worth an estimated £600m, and hotels worth £1bn. The Mail on Sunday John Lewis boss warns of ‘fragile’ High Street The boss of John Lewis has warned that the battered high street is poised on a knife edge and could face disaster if hit by any further shocks to consumer confidence. Managing director Andy Street said the consumer economy remained ‘fragile’ despite stores being in the thick of critical preparations for Christmas. High street sales are stagnant and shoppers have less money to spend. “I would describe the retail market as flat,” said Street, speaking ahead of the opening of the latest John Lewis store at Westfield Stratford City next to the Olympic Park in east London on Tuesday. The Mail on Sunday Morrisons to stock rose-tinted beer for women Brewing giant Molson Coors has signed up its first major retailer to sell a beer aimed at women. The company, which also brews Britain’s best-selling lager Carling, has signed a deal with Morrisons for at least 393 of its stores to sell the Animee beer that comes in rose, clear and lemon. The brewer is also talking to other supermarkets to sell the beer. The Mail on Sunday Stein’s net gain for Padstow Celebrity chef Rick Stein has revealed plans to expand his Padstow-based restaurant and food empire as his company posted rising sales and profits. The Seafood Restaurant, which includes Mr Stein’s 11 ventures, from fish and chip shops and cafes to a public house, has seen sales increase by 4% in the year to August. Full time employment passed the 300 mark for the first time as it opened a seafood restaurant, deli and fish and chip shop in Falmouth during 2010. The group is one of the companies highlighted in the inaugural Telegraph 1,000 list of companies published today – a snapshot of Britain’s leading private or AIM-listed businesses that have prospered and have created jobs in the past 12 months. Mr Stein said he expected more jobs to be created this year. “We are dependent on the economy so I am slightly wary of the future but it does appear that people want to eat out and stay over in our rooms and come to Padstow. If they don’t eat in the restaurant, they have fish and chips,” he said. Mr Stein said no new openings were imminent. “We are looking everywhere but nothing has been decided,” he said. “If our current trading continue we will be definitely looking to expand. I do not want to have a chain, but it’s exciting to have things up your sleeve.” The Sunday Telegraph A livener at your local A landlady has installed a defibrillator at her pub…in case a local suffers a heart attack. Claire Reed, 30, decided to fix the 1,700-volt device to a wall outside the Highwayman pub in Horsmonden, Kent, because the nearest hospital is a 25-minute drive away. First-aider Mrs Reed said: “If you have an attack now, your chances are better.” The Sunday Mirror Call for ban on TV junk food ads before 9pm The Government is failing to protect thousands of children at risk from obesity and cardiovascular disease, a leading food charity has warned. The group Sustain says the Department of Health is not doing enough to regulate the sale and marketing of junk foods with a high salt and fat content, which have been linked to thousands of preventable deaths. Children were particularly susceptible to advertising, their report claimed. The charity urged the Government to introduce a 9pm watershed on junk food adverts on TV. Trans fats – declared toxic by the World Health Organisation – are present in many processed foods. While some companies pledge to remove them from their foods, it is only subject to voluntary regulation in the UK. The Independent, Saturday Robert Earl, founder and chief executive of the Italian restaurant chain’s parent company, Planet Hollywood, is to open his fifth restaurant in Britain – in Elstree – under an exclusive partnership with Village Hotels, part of the De Vere Group. The Times, Saturday Future still orange for Scotland’s favourite soft drink Scotland’s famous Irn-Bru drink is to keep its orange colour after a proposed intervention from Brussels was abandoned. The European Commission decided not to reduce the amount of colouring allowed in the soft drink to a level that would have forced the manufacturer AG Barr to change its recipe. Alex Salmond, the First Minister, had written to John Dalli, the Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy, to lobby against the change. The Times, Saturday Mike Danson, the Datamonitor founder and chairman of Progressive Digital Media, is understood to be buying the Samling Hotel, in Windermere, while Sir Peter Rigby’s Eden Hotel Collection is buying the Greenway in Cheltenham. The Times, Saturday Westfield opens its doors to east London We may be in the midst of a retailing downturn, with one in seven shops on the high street boarded up, but east London is about to stage the grand opening of 1.9m square feet of virgin retail space. On Tuesday, Westfield Stratford City, the £1.45bn shopping centre development next to the Olympic stadium, will open to shoppers who will descend on a site that will eventually be home to 3,000 stores, 70 bars and restaurants, three hotels and the UK’s largest casino. The so-called “anchor” retailers – such as Marks & Spencer and John Lewis, which have taken huge outlets of more than 200,000 square feet – will be joined in Europe’s largest urban shopping centre by the likes of Top Shop, Next, Apple and Prada. The Guardian, Saturday MPs get pub jobs Forty MPs are to work in pubs to learn about the problems landlords are facing. The All Party Parliamentary Beer Group came up with the idea to highlight issues such as high rents charged to investment companies looking to make a quick return. MP Sheryll Murray pulled pints at her local in Cornwall and said: “It made me realise how important pubs are to the local community. MPs have to do everything we can to support them.” Licensee Russell Ham, from the Devon and Cornwall Inn, said: “Even with business doing well the margins are tight.” The Sun, Saturday