Pub giant Greene King’s recent manoeuvres in the hospitality sector have seen the company acquire, establish, diversify, come close to selling and then choose to retain its hotel business.
The rollercoaster ride related to its Venture Hotels arm, a portfolio of largely ‘pubs with rooms’ that Greene King has successfully built into a recognisable brand over the past three years having originally acquired the portfolio in 2019, and which now includes luxury hotel brand Everly Hotels, which it launched in 2024.
Its first hotel under the new moniker, the White Horses in Rottingdean, Sussex, opened last year with 32 bedrooms following a multimillion-pound investment. At the time, Greene King said it had plans for multiple "destination-led" sites in the pipeline, but by the spring of this year it appeared to be ready to complete an about turn.
In May reports surfaced that Greene King was in advanced negotiations with RedCat Pub Company to sell the Venture Hotels portfolio for around £90 million in a package that was understood to cover some 39 sites.
RedCat, backed by Oaktree Capital Management and launched in 2021 to take advantage of the swathe of pub sites coming to the market after the pandemic, already operates close to 100 sites. About a third of those are under its Coaching Inn Group subsidiary, which has around 1,400 rooms, and it was said to be the frontrunner. For its part, Greene King itself confirmed it was examining “all investment options” for the business, including the possibility of different ownership.
By mid-June, however, the sale was off. Following a full business review, Greene King announced that it would continue to operate Venture Hotels within its Venture Brands division.
Greene King’s on/off deal
The background to this appears to lie in the company’s wider financial position. Greene King’s results for 2024 showed revenue of about £2.45 billion, representing growth of just over 3% compared with the year prior. Adjusted operating profit stood at £198 million. Yet those headline figures were overshadowed by a non-cash impairment of £219.9 million, covering goodwill, property, plant and equipment, plus right-of-use assets.
The impairment was large enough to convert a small underlying profit into a statutory loss of £16.4 million and a pre-tax loss of £147.1 million for the year. Capital expenditure in 2024 amounted to £172.7 million, a reduction from almost £195 million the year before, which reflected both a more cautious approach and the leveraging of previous investment.
The internal reorganisation that accompanied the decision involved expanding the role of Vincent Madden, formerly of Arora Hotels, to oversee Venture Hotels alongside the Metropolitan Pub Company and Crafted Pubs. In making the announcement, the company stressed the progress that the hotel portfolio had made in recent years and highlighted the distinctive character of its sites.
While the hotel portfolio was under review, Greene King pressed ahead with investment in its core pubs business. In the first half of 2025 the company announced nearly £42 million of capital allocated across managed, leased, tenanted and franchise pubs, with the Pub Partners division alone receiving £27 million for refurbishments and improvements.
When Greene King announced it was no longer going ahead with the sale of Venture Hotels, management emphasised that the sites in that portfolio have a “unique sense of place that locals can feel proud of”.
On its future, the pub giant pointed to plans for a £40 million brewery in Bury St Edmunds achieving planning permission in January this year. The site is expected to be operational in 2027.
“We are determined to offer our customers the best pub experience and so it is important to maintain momentum in our investment plans despite the challenging wider economic environment,” Greene King CEO Nick Mackenzie said on discussing Greene King’s ongoing pub refurbishment and investment programme.
Greene King calls for rates reform
Mackenzie has also called for the business rates system of property taxes to be changed to a tax on profits. The trade body the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) said recently that it expected pub closures at a rate of more than one a day during 2025, adding to the 350 net closures during 2024. It cited business rates as a factor in those closures.
“Pubs are going to be around for the long term, but we need to address the unfairness in the system to allow them to flourish,” Mackenzie said. “It isn’t fair that the sector has 0.4% of the rateable property but pays 2.1% of the bills. The sector is a massive employer and incredibly important for local communities, so we just feel it is important to underline how beneficial it is to tax pubs fairly.”
In terms of its hotel decision, timing and market liquidity are critical. The decision to examine a sale — and then to retain the hotels — appears to signal a pragmatic approach by Greene King, using disposals when they are accretive on a risk-adjusted basis, but with a determination to preserve operating assets that contribute to its long-term resilience.
Market Response to hotel deal
The market reaction and appetite for a deal of Greene King’s size were also revealing. Boutique portfolios and pub-with-rooms packages typically attract a particular buyer set, notably private equity with hospitality specialisms, local operators and consolidators spun out of the operator community.
The involvement of personnel with prior Greene King experience in buyer groups underlines the sector’s relational dynamics, because many transactions depend on operators who understand the idiosyncrasies of pub real estate, such as licensing, planning and community embeddedness.
The market appears to have taken the decision calmly. Fitch Ratings reaffirmed Greene King’s securitised notes in April 2025, maintaining a stable outlook, and its rating has remained unchanged, suggesting that the planned sale of the Venture Hotels arm and its subsequent cancellation was not material enough to impact Greene King’s overall credit risk profile.
As a result, any eventual future sale would likely be judged opportunistic for one of the UK’s best known pub brands, which can trace its roots back to 1799 and which was listed on the London Stock Exchange until it was acquired in 2019 by Hong Kong property developer, CK Asset.