Punch up

30 March 2010 By Neil Collins

Giles Thorley built Punch into Britain’s biggest pubs group by using a private equitystyle balance sheet. The financial engineering has failed. Despite a rescue rights issue, the shares are lower today than when Thorley took over seven years ago. A pub pro might do better.

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Giles Thorley is to step down as chief executive of Punch Taverns after seven years in the post, and nine years with the company, the company announced on March 30. The share price was up 2 percent to 83.6 pence in midafternoon trading. In 2003, Punch reported pretax profit of 113 million pounds on sales of 429 million pounds. For the year to August 2009, sales were 1.44 billion pounds, and pretax profit was 160 million pounds, before exceptional charges of 566 million pounds.

Peter Cawdron, Punch chairman, thanked Thorley for his "incredible commitment and drive" and wished him "every success in the next part of his career."

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