SPLITs Followers' Thoughts for 2006

Sorry.....yes indeed, REG = Regent Inns

The UK pub & bar business continues to be one of frenetic rationalisation; the most recent being two mezzanine financed private equity takeovers of bar operators Inventive Leisure (IVL) and Urbium (URM). In both cases the resurgent Regent Inns (REG) were underbidders in the acquisition process. Their new management is flushed with the success of their turnaround of a business which at one time looked headed for Administration. More recently however, their failure to tie the knot with a target may well have left them vulnerable to one of the many other predators fishing the private equity waters.

Whether the sp benefits from the continued rerating of the business or whether a takeover does emerge, for those chartists among us, this has surely to be one of the very best Reverse Head & Shoulder formations one has seen in a long time.