UK: Young & Co’s Brewery’s family owners confess that family stake is less than 50%

The Times reported November 20 that Young & Co’s Brewery, the London-based pub operator, has admitted for the first time that the Young family and related trusts’ stake is slightly less than 50 per cent of the shares.

The admission, less than two months after the death of John Young, the chairman for the past 44 years, will fuel persistent speculation that the 175-year-old company could become a bid target. Likely suitors include Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries, Greene King, Punch Taverns, Robert Tchenguiz’s Laurel Pub Company and private equity groups.

The report said that Stephen Goodyear, chief executive, confirmed to The Times that the combined stake controlled by the family and associated trusts was slightly less than 50 per cent, although he insisted that this did not make the company “any more or less vulnerable” than before.

The chances of a takeover had been increased by the decision last year to scrap the B shares that effectively had made Young’s, which has been a public company since 1955, bid-proof. The recent sale of its brewery in Wandsworth to Minerva, the property developer, for £69 million also removed a potential poison pill, while the death of Mr Young, a great-great-grandson of the founder Charles Young, is seen as the end of an era.

The main attraction of Young’s is its estate of 221 pubs in London and the South East, of which 178 are freeholds. In the half-year results recently published, they were revalued at £399 million - a net asset value of £31.87 a share.

22 November, 2006