Alcohol Cameron to set minimum price for alcohol Options for a minimum price on alcohol will be announced by the government this week, as David Cameron launches a consultation on his attempt to crack down on cheap booze, blamed for fuelling anti-social behaviour and drink problems. The report, due on Wednesday, is thought to recommend three possible prices for each unit - measured as 10ml or 8g of pure alcohol - of 40p, 45p or 50p. Downing Street said on Sunday it had not been decided if the prime minister would express his preference, though in the past he and home secretary Theresa May have talked about the benefits of a price of 40p a unit. That could mean the cheapest pint of lager or cider at an off-licence or supermarket would be about £1 and the cheapest bottle of wine about £4. The minimum pricing policy has been strongly backed by health professionals: last week the Alcohol Health Alliance, whose members include the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing, wrote to the Sunday Times urging the government to set the unit price at 50p to protect the heaviest drinkers and those around them, including children. Cameron's support for the policy has drawn criticism that it will penalise moderate drinkers, and warnings that if the price is set too high sales will fall, reducing alcohol duty paid to the Treasury. On Sunday the Wine & Spirit Trade Association highlighted research showing widepread public oppposition to a minimum unit price for alcohol, principly because of disbelief about the benefits and concern about penalising moderate drinkers. The research, published in the online peer-reviewed journal BMC Public Health, suggested public support could be won over, adding that the results of 28 focus groups "also suggest that clearer educational messages are needed to dispel misconceptions regarding the effectiveness of the policy, and the introduction of the policy as part of a package of government initiatives to address excess alcohol consumption might be the best way to advance support for the policy.” Sunday Times Sunday Telegraph| Mail on Sunday The Observer Pubs Britain's pubs selling a billion fewer pints a year Britain’s pubs are now selling a billion fewer pints a year, shock new figures reveal. Beer sales are running at 3.9 billion pints a year, down from five billion in 2008, meaning one in five fewer pints are being sold. Worst hit areas include ¬Lancashire, Wales and the Midlands where beer sales plunged by more than 27% in the last year. The huge slump is being blamed on cheap supermarket sales and the Government’s beer duty ¬“escalator” which adds two per cent above inflation onto every pint. The figures come ahead of a mass lobby of Parliament on December 12 when 1,000 campaigners will call for the escalator – which adds £1 to every pint – to be scrapped. The British Beer and Pub ¬Association says the tax policy is costing around 5,000 jobs a year. There are now 51,000 pubs in Britain, a fall of almost 30,000 in three decades. Phil Tate of -analysts CGA Strategy, which compiled the figures, said: “The duty escalator has made an already challenging trading environment even more difficult.” The Sunday Mirror’s Support Your Pub campaign, backed by the Campaign for Real Ale, is calling on David Cameron to help struggling pubs. CAMRA’s Jonathan Mail said: “The Government needs to act before Britain’s beer and pub industry is damaged beyond repair.” Sunday Mirror Beer tax? Enough’s enough, says Fuller’s The chairman of Fuller, Smith & Turner has urged the Chancellor to scrap the near-5 per cent beer duty increase in the next Budget, claiming that high taxes are doing huge damage to the brewing and pub industry. Michael Turner said that the annual above-inflation increase under the so-called duty escalator was “short-sighted” and that the Government’s policies were “putting at risk the overwhelmingly positive impact the industry has on employment and local community life”. He said that over the past 12 months Fuller’s had paid £114m in taxes and other government levies. “We’re paying a staggering 36% of our revenues to the Government,” he said. “That’s enough. I would urge it to rethink this damaging policy ahead of the 2013 Budget.” The Times Restaurants Dunstone brings Five Guys to Britain The founder of Carphone Warehouse is moving from mobile phones to fast food. Sir Charles Dunstone plans to bring Five Guys, a trendy American burger chain, to Britain, as flagged up by M&C Report in July. He has formed a joint venture with its parent company and hopes to open the first of several outlets next year. Five Guys is part of a wave of fast-food restaurants that have made hamburgers fashionable again. It competes with rivals such as Smashburger and In-N-Out for the accolade of best burger in America. Five Guys has 1,000 outlets in the US and Canada, and counts President Barack Obama among its celebrity customers. Dunstone, 48, discovered Five Guys on a trip to America and is an equal partner in the British venture, which will open its first restaurant in London. Worth £860m, according to The Sunday Times Rich List, Dunstone founded Carphone from a flat in central London and turned it into one of Britain’s biggest retailers. Experts predicted that the burger brand would do well in Britain. Nick Weir of Shelley Sandzer, the restaurant property firm, said: “Five Guys is the fastest-growing fast-food restaurant group in the US and has gained a cult following. You wouldn’t bet against it being a huge success here.” Sunday Times Celebrity restaurants group Caprice Holdings 'weather the slump' Caprice Holdings, the company behind some of London’s poshest restaurants, has reported lower profits last year after spending £800,000 opening a new venue in Mayfair. The group, which owns Le Caprice and The Ivy among other celebrity haunts, made underlying operating profits of £5.7m in 2011 compared with about £6.3m in the previous 12 months. Caprice is owned by multi-millionaire Richard Caring, whose other assets include Annabel’s private club and the Cote Bistro restaurant chain. He said his businesses were weathering the slump, but he admitted: “We have seen people slightly more cautious about what they order.” Caring’s private clubs posted a rise in operating profits last year to £2m, up from £1.7m in the previous 12 months. Mail on Sunday Restaurant boss starts pay revolt on bank swaps One of London’s top restaurateurs has stopped paying Royal Bank of Scotland thousands of pounds a month to service a complex derivative contract he says the lender mis-sold him. Sami Wasif, the co-founder of Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant Hakkasan, said he has already missed one payment of nearly £4,000 on an interest rate swap and would not be making any further payments to RBS as a matter of “principle”. “I feel very strongly about this. I trusted the bank to charge me fairly and I don’t know what I’m paying for,” said Mr Wasif, who says he has already paid nearly £200,000 to RBS for an interest rate hedge he claims he never wanted. Mr Wasif wrote to RBS last month to tell them he was no longer prepared to pay for the swap, but said he has yet to receive a reply from the lender despite sending a follow-up email to explain the action he was taking. A spokesman for RBS said: “Customers are reminded of their contractual obligations with the bank. If any customer has concerns over payments they should talk to us and we will deal with them on a case by case basis.” Barclays and HBSC have begun allowing some small-business customers to suspend their swap payments ahead of their cases being reviewed as part of an independent compensation scheme for victims of mis-sold interest rate derivatives. RBS has already rejected a complaint by Mr Wasif and said that it did not believe he could take his case to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The bank has yet to confirm whether he will be eligible to take part in the independent compensation scheme. Mr Wasif said he hoped other businesses in his position would follow his lead and also stop paying for their swaps. “A lot of people have the same problem as me. I have no problem paying the fixed rate [loan interest]. I don’t want to default on my payments,” he said. Sunday Telegraph Takeaway groups battle for dominance After revolutionising the way people buy everything from music to cars, the internet is turning another multibillion-pound industry on its head: takeaway food. With the takeaway industry worth almost $8bn in the UK and more than $75bn globally, the stakes are high – especially with the online economy’s propensity for winner-takes-all scenarios.“It’s a landgrab – but not at any cost,” says Klaus Nyengaard, chief executive at Just Eat, the world’s largest online takeaway service by sales. Since it was founded in 2001, the London-based Just Eat has grown steadily to encompass more than 28,000 restaurants worldwide. Global revenues were £35m in 2011 and will be north of £50m in 2012. Its business model is relatively simple. Just Eat takes a cut of about 10 per cent of any orders made through its site. Restaurants get a much wider exposure, while customers get ready access to hundreds of reviews of local takeaways – and an excuse to throw away the piles of flyers cluttering up the hall. Now, however, its hegemony is being challenged, with the most prominent threat coming from Delivery Hero, a Berlin-based start-up formed two years ago. From a standing start in 2010, Delivery Hero earned revenues of about €25m last year, channelling €250m worth of orders to takeaway restaurants across its 12 markets. “We want to become the largest restaurant platform in the world,” says Fabian Siegel, chief executive of Delivery Hero, which operates as Hungry House in the UK. “I expect that we will be the largest platform this year.” Both Delivery Hero and Just Eat have armed themselves for the fight with heavy fundraising. Just Eat raised $64m earlier this year, bringing its total funding over the past three years to almost $130m. Meanwhile, investors have pumped $80m into Delivery Hero. National fast food outlets are already adjusting to consumers’ shift to online. Online orders accounted for almost 60 per cent of UK sales at Domino’s, the pizza company, in its most recent quarter. Companies such as Just Eat and Delivery Hero are pushing online business further down the food chain to the industry’s independent players. “[Just Eat] brings customers that we wouldn’t normally attract,” says Jake O’Neill, who runs Flying Fish Sushi, a sushi takeaway in south London. “They get a lot of students. Hungry House has higher-end customers.” FT Weekend Hotels Savoy cooks up debt deal The future of the Savoy hotel has been secured after its owners sealed a £290m refinancing of its debt pile. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia and Lloyds Banking Group, owners of the London landmark in a joint venture, have lined up loans from the French bank Crédit Agricole and the German lender Deka. The deal will replace borrowings used for a refurbishment of the grade II listed building. They have to be repaid next month. The Savoy, built on the Strand in 1889 by the theatre impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte with profits from Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas, was the capital’s original luxury hotel. D’Oyly Carte wanted to provide accommodation for tourists who flocked to see his shows. Guests were wowed by the Savoy’s electric lifts and hot running water. The general manager was César Ritz, who went on to found the famous hotel of the same name beside Green Park. Prince Alwaleed and HBOS, now part of Lloyds, bought the Savoy from a consortium led by the Irish financier Derek Quinlan in 2005, and handed the management to Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. According to accounts for Breezeroad, the hotel’s holding company, its debt swelled on the back of a two-and-a-half-year makeover that finished in 2010. Including interest, Lloyds was owed £287m at the end of that year. It is understood that Crédit Agricole and Deka will refinance this debt, which is due to be repaid next month. Sources said the deal had been agreed in outline but not finalised. All parties declined to comment. Sunday Times Leisure Les Ambassadeurs Club acquired An Eastern European buyer has bought the freehold of one of London’s most exclusive casinos, Les Ambassadeurs Club, for £65m. The unnamed buyer bought the freehold interest from the Crown Estate. The Times Investors pool funds to rescue Rileys A group of as-yet unnamed investors have pitched in to rescue beleaguered pool and snooker club operator Rileys Sports Bars Ltd from the brink of collapse. KPMG had been brought in after the snooker club operator had suffered a downturn in cash-flow and slower spending by members in the wake of the economic downturn. Rileys CEO Maurice Kelly said that the business had been hit by the smoking ban and Gambling Act changes, which directly affected commercial clubs. KPMG have engineered a deal with the investor group, which will see 78 clubs, out of a total of 103, continue to operate with the benefit of a 'significant' infusion of funds via a pre-pack administration. The remaining 25 clubs will be shut down. A spokesperson at KPMG said that the Rileys membership base was both large and loyal, thus presenting an attractive opportunity to potential acquirers. Rileys had previously collapsed into administration in 2009, to be saved, albeit with the loss of 200 jobs, by several directors who with others formed an acquisition vehicle called Valiant Sports. At its peak the company had 165 clubs across the United Kingdom, but the heyday of the 80's has long since passed. General interest in snooker as a sport has been in a slow decline for at least a decade in the UK and across other European countries. The 'unfavourable' legislation has merely steepened the trend over the last few years. Daily Express Daily Telegraph Essenden back and I'm hoping for same result Derek Pain in his The Independent column has enlisted Essenden as the latest recruit to his share portfolio. He says: “It has been in the wars during recent years, but is now showing signs that it has at last got its act together. The group’s revival stems from the appearance as chief executive of Nick Basing. He joined in 2009 and set about reorganising the business. Slowly the seemingly perennial dark days were replaced by growing optimism. In its last full year a pretax profit was achieved, only to be annihilated by tax charges. In the first half of the current year a £780,000 pre-tax profit, with £535,000 left after the Exchequer take, was booked. Mr Basing, who formerly ran upmarket restaurant chains, unloaded some properties and reshaped and improved the remaining sites. Leisure is a tough, hard business, particularly in these cash-conscious days. But he is confident. While acknowledging the difficulties ahead, Mr Basing says: “This is now a fit and healthy company.” Essenden has some significant shareholders. Biggest, with 29.9%, is North Atlantic Value, hailing from the Christopher Mills investment stable; Trefick, the Isle of Man active investment fund, where the veteran businessman Jack Petchey is the major influence, has 19.4%, and old-established Schroder’s sits on a 14.7% stake. The Independent Cinema giants eye Berlusconi chain The Space Cinema Britain's three biggest cinema chains are considering bids for a group of picture houses owned by disgraced former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and fashion house Benetton. The Guy Hands-owned Odeon, London-listed Cineworld and acquisitive Vue are keen to expand their European operations and are considering whether to stump up the estimated €300m (£242m) asking price for The Space Cinema chain. The cash would help Mr Berlusconi's Mediaset television empire, which has been struggling with low advertising revenues and owns 51 per cent of The Space. However, Odeon might struggle with competition issues because it is the biggest cinema operator in Italy and The Space is second with 350 screens and 20 per cent market share. Also, the price fetched at the auction run by Citi might be depressed by the country's consumer spending woes, which saw October ticket sales down 41% on the same month last year. The cinema market is banking on bumper audiences for the first film in The Hobbit trilogy in the build-up to Christmas. A source at one of the potential British buyers said: "It would be crazy for any of us not to look at this." Independent on Sunday And finally… The £1.49 pot of caviar that’s cheaper than a Big Mac A low-cost supermarket is selling pots of caviar for just £1.49 - cheaper than a Big Mac. The 100g jars, which are being sold by the budget chain Lidl, contain capelin roe, a form of caviar, which is hugely popular in Japan. In contrast, the cheapest caviar at Fortnum and Mason costs £80 for 30g, and the most expensive costs £350 for 200g. Golden Almas, the rarest and costliest form, comes at a cost of £840 for 30g. Traditionally, caviar refers to the salted eggs of sturgeon. But now it is an endangered species, the eggs of other fish such as salmon, paddlefish, whitefish and lumpfish can be used if the name is on the packaging. Lidl's version - capelin – is a small forage fish found in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The Telegraph

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